The Kidnapping at Gombe: Decolonization, Evolution, and Human Behavior

On May 19, 1975, a rebel guerilla group from Zaire crossed Lake Tanganika and kidnapped four Western researchers from the Gombe Stream Research Center. Before this moment, David Hamburg had been one of many social scientists—including Anthony Storr and Lionel Tiger—who hoped to uncover the evolutionary roots of aggression in animals and humans. He worked as a Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University’s Medical Center where he had developed a keen interest in the burgeoning field of primatology during the 1960s. Alongside Paul Ehrlich and Joshua Lederberg, he founded the Human Biology program to integrate social and biological sciences into a single undergraduate curriculum. With Jane Goodall he also established an outdoor primate research facility known locally as “Gombe West.” Partial funding for the research institute came from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation where Tiger served as co-Research Director. When the Stanford students were kidnapped, Hamburg immediately traveled to Tanzania in order to do everything he could to secure their release. He succeeded, yet the experience transformed his long-term career goals. After much consideration, he accepted an offer from Philip Handler of the National Academy of Sciences to become President of the Institute of Medicine, a position from which he hoped to make a practical difference in ending violence by focusing on the health and economic concerns of developing countries. Gombe, too, changed as a result of the kidnapping, as Tanzanians continued research in the absence of Western scientists and took on greater responsibility for the intellectual mission of the Center. The transformations of both Hamburg and Gombe, rendered visible through extraordinary circumstances, echoed deep changes in the evolutionary study of human behavior by social scientists during these years.