Forensic Intelligence and the Deportation Research Clinic: Toward a New Paradigm

Abstract

Since 2012, the Deportation Research Clinic, part of the Buffett Institute for Global Studies at Northwestern University, has been pursuing research on government misconduct under the rubric of what Jacqueline Stevens calls “forensic intelligence.” The Clinic uses law and publicity, including scholarship, to create new realities, which in turn produce new facts and knowledge. Stevens draws on scholarship by S.M. Amadae, Noam Chomsky, Philip Green, Chalmers Johnson, Kenneth Osgood, Ido Oren, Michael Rogin, and Frances Saunders to explain the relation of “forensic intelligence” to the “national intelligence” paradigm now organizing mainstream political science research. The article concludes by describing how U.S. government and economic elites distort research and teaching priorities, and provides examples from Northwestern University.