In September 1965, not long after news broke about a Pentagon-sponsored program to study social conflict in South America, the Social Science Research Council played host to a meeting on overseas research. Feelings were raw. Opposition to the Vietnam War was mounting, and many scholars worried that the Pentagon's studies of conflict and counterinsurgency would bring overseas researchers under suspicion as agents of American military power. Forty-three years later, in a different war, the same anxiety persists. In April, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced the Minerva Research Initiative, a Pentagon-financed, university-based social-science program whose purpose is to study the Chinese military, cultural dynamics in the Islamic world, and other topics of interest to the military. The $50-million, five-year plan was coolly received in some quarters. The president of the American Anthropological Association urged that such research be paid for not by the Pentagon but by agencies with "decades of experience in building an infrastructure of respected peer reviewers"--like the National Science Foundation. This time around, however, the Pentagon is taking steps to assuage scholarly fears. Through the Association of American Universities, Defense Department officials consulted with university presidents before the Minerva project was announced. The program's creators have emphasized that all Minerva research will be open and unclassified, in contrast to certain Vietnam-era projects. On June 30, the Pentagon signed an agreement to facilitate collaborative social-science projects with the National Science Foundation. The question now, as in 1965, is which agencies will steer the research.