The Review: Authority vs. authoritarianism in anthropology

Plus: The Gaza war comes to campus. ADVERTISEMENT [The Review Logo]( You can also [read this newsletter on the web](. Or, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, [unsubscribe](. Last month, the American Anthropology Association canceled an accepted panel called “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology.” In its [statement]( explaining the cancellation, the AAA made two arguments. First, they accused the panelists of bigotry, of working “to advance a ‘scientific’ reason to question the humanity of already-marginalized groups of people, in this case, those who exist outside a strict and narrow sex/gender binary.” Second, they accused the panelists of pseudoscientific charlatanism. The panelists were said to have “relied on assumptions that run contrary to the settled science in our discipline” and to “contradict scientific evidence, including the wealth of anthropological scholarship on gender and sex.” The exclusion of the panel, the AAA wanted to insist, was not political, but scientific. As Nicolas Langlitz [argued]( in our pages, the “settled science” line is, to put it mildly, an exaggeration. And it’s an ironic one, given anthropology’s longstanding interest in exposing the social uses of scientific authority. The AAA would have done better to rely exclusively on the bigotry claim, for which, as Ryan Quinn [reported]( in Inside Higher Ed, there is some evidence. One presenter, for instance, mocked the use of preferred pronouns on her office door; another said that “trans children do not exist; they are being fabricated en masse by a very well-planned and financed initiative.” The AAA might simply have written that, after looking into the backgrounds of the panelists, it had determined that on balance they were bigots acting in bad faith. That decision would still have been controversial, but it would have been coherent. Instead, it relied on an authoritarian invocation of “science” to justify an ideological decision, asserting a disciplinary consensus where none exists. That fact cannot be stressed enough: Many anthropologists flatly dispute the AAA’s claim that “settled science” shows that biological sex is not binary. Some even think the opposite. The biological anthropologist Robert Lynch, at Pennsylvania State University, told me bluntly: “I do think that the science is basically settled, just not in the Orwellian, up is down, manner suggested by the AAA. Certainly from an evolutionary standpoint, the science was settled in 1972 when my Ph.D. adviser Robert Trivers threw down the gauntlet with ‘[Parental Investment and Sexual Selection]( and the basic evolutionary principles have been largely unchallenged since.” Mark Collard, a professor of archaeology and biological anthropology at Simon Fraser University, had this to say: “I think the AAA leadership group are either ignorant about biological thinking regarding sex or being disingenuous. Their statement is nonsense.” Lynch and Collard are far from alone. Their understanding of biological sex may, of course, be incorrect. The point is that there is nothing approaching agreement among the anthropologists. To have pretended otherwise involved an elementary abuse of the authority residing in scholarly organizations like the AAA. As the late intellectual historian Thomas L. Haskell explains in his contribution to the 1996 volume [The Future of Academic Freedom]( professional societies like the Modern Language Association, the American Historical Association, and the American Economic Association (to name some of the earliest ones, all founded in the 1880s) helped establish the authority of their respective disciplines precisely by guaranteeing that the ideas offered by researchers in any given area have been acid-tested by informed specialist disputation. (The AAA was founded not long after, in 1902.) “If there is anything at all that justifies the special authority and trustworthiness of community-sponsored opinions,” Haskell writes, “it lies in the fact that these truth-claims have weathered competition more severe than would be thought acceptable in ordinary human communities.” In claiming that “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby” was pulled to protect “the scientific integrity” of the conference, the AAA illegitimately banked on its role as corporate arbiter of expert consensus, risking damage to the reputation of its discipline not just within the academy but with the wider public. The unavoidable impression is that the AAA is averse to the “perpetual exposure to criticism” from which, Haskell points out, scholarly communities derive their authority. As PEN America’s [press release]( puts it, “Reservations about the scientific rigor of the panel, which were raised by association members after its initial acceptance, would have been better addressed at the conference itself.” The AAA made sure they couldn’t be. That’s bad for anthropology, and it’s bad for the academy more generally. “Even people friendly to the university,” Louis Menand writes in the introduction to The Future of Academic Freedom, “have begun to feel that it has brought its troubles on itself by failing to agree on an account of its activities that merits continued social commitment.” The confusion that marks the AAA’s handling of the canceled panel reflects one such failure. The public does not need to understand all of the work that scholars do, and it doesn’t need to find their various ideological, moral, or epistemic commitments appealing. It does need to trust that scholars argue with one another rigorously and fairly; that their knowledge-claims are not just politics by other means; and that when they assert a scholarly consensus, they do so in good faith. That good faith seems to have been absent here. SPONSOR CONTENT | Stevens Institute of Technology [Stevens Institute of Technology Is All in on AI]( NEWSLETTER [Sign Up for the Teaching Newsletter]( Find insights to improve teaching and learning across your campus. Delivered on Thursdays. To read this newsletter as soon as it sends, [sign up]( to receive it in your email inbox. The Gaza war comes to campus American campuses are seeing and will continue to see protests and counter-protests over the tragic Israel-Gaza war. The rhetoric has not been temperate. As our Maggie Hicks [reports]( last week, at George Mason University, pro-Hamas students chanted: “They got tanks, we got hang gliders! Glory to the resistance fighters!” An [image]( featuring a stylized silhouette of a Hamas fighter aloft, presumably descending on the Israeli music festival where several hundred party-goers would be murdered, was distributed by the National Students for Justice in Palestine to its local chapters. In North Carolina, someone screamed “Nazis” at supporters of the Palestinian cause and was taken away by the police. The heat has so far been mostly confined to words and not deeds, although at Columbia University an Israeli student was allegedly [beaten with a stick]( for putting up posters with the names of Israeli hostages. Besides working to prevent harassment and violence while maintaining space for protest and argument, what should administrators do at a time like this? In our pages, Jeffrey Flier [takes a close look]( at a sequence of conflicts at Harvard over statements made by President Claudine Gay and extrapolates a general lesson: When it comes to pronouncements from administrators in times of terrible upheaval, less is more. “In institutions that boast well-articulated principles of institutional neutrality, no one should expect the president or deans to speak on behalf of the college on the recent events, not because they don’t personally have strong views, but because it is not seen as their role as leaders to do so.” He suggests that institutions study the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report and begin to create their own versions of institutional neutrality. Some campus leaders are already doing so. One of the most thoughtful [statements]( comes from Williams College’s president, Maud Mandel. “As many of you are aware,” Mandel writes, “I have not issued a public statement on behalf of the college in the days following the recent, horrific attacks by Hamas on Israelis and the deaths of Palestinian civilians in the military retaliation. I have heard from members of the community that the college’s silence in the face of these events is itself a statement, and an unacceptable one.” The perception that the lack of a statement is itself a statement is only possible if one assumes that college leaders have a responsibility, in general, to weigh in on grave issues of public concern. For Mandel, their responsibility is precisely the opposite. She offers three reasons. First, “terrible tragedies and injustices occur too frequently in life.” Second, “our most important mission is to teach students how to think, and empower them to do so for themselves — not to tell them what to think.” Third, when college leaders are speaking qua college leaders, they should restrict themselves to “topics related to our core educational mission.” Mandel’s strikes me as wise counsel. ADVERTISEMENT SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHRONICLE Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( for unlimited access to essential news, analysis, and advice. The Latest THE REVIEW | ESSAY [We Shouldn’t Have Authoritarian Decrees in Anthropology]( By Nicolas Langlitz [STORY IMAGE]( In a recent spat over a panel at their annual meeting, two anthropology groups suggested that the biology of sex is “settled science.” That violates the best traditions of the field. ADVERTISEMENT THE REVIEW | ESSAY [West Virginia U. Changed My Life]( By Crystal Lake [STORY IMAGE]( Will future generations of students have the opportunities I had? THE REVIEW | OPINION [High-Debt Programs Escape Accountability — Again]( By Preston Cooper [STORY IMAGE]( The new gainful-employment rule should have gone further. THE REVIEW | OPINION [Now Is the Time for Administrators to Embrace Neutrality]( By Jeffrey Flier [STORY IMAGE]( The Israel-Hamas war might finally show colleges the virtues of the Kalven Report. THE REVIEW | OPINION [How Weak Leadership Enables Campus Scandals]( By Donald E. Heller [STORY IMAGE]( Quickly suspending or firing an accused employee is worth the legal risk. Recommended - “The campus experience for undergraduates of the late 1990s was a quiet one. The culture wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s had subsided and were spoken of in the past tense by survivors. Political correctness was dormant. There were hardly any drugs. We had irony and hip-hop.” In Liberties, Christian Lorentzen on the [belatedness]( of his generation. - “To speak to your time, we once believed, required much more than new ‘content.’ It required a commitment to new modes of narration, new styles of expression, that could bear witness to sea changes in society.” In the New York Times Magazine, Jason Farago on the [death of novelty](. - “George Eliot thinks that suffering is what we have to accept, but that it can be ‘transformed’ into something creative, useful, and consoling.” In the New York Review of Books, Hermione Lee [reviews]( Clare Carlisle’s new biography of George Eliot. Write to me at len.gutkin@chronicle.com. Yours, Len Gutkin SPONSOR CONTENT | Amazon Business [Powering Higher Ed with Smarter Procurement]( With Smart Business Buying, Amazon Business can help colleges and universities make going back to campus easier (and less expensive) FROM THE CHRONICLE STORE [Surviving as a Small College - The Chronicle Store]( [Surviving as a Small College]( The past decade has been especially hard on small colleges. There’s stiffer competition for traditional-age students and many students are harder to win over. [Order your copy]( to examine the challenges facing small colleges, insights on how they might surmount them, and the benefits distinct to these unique institutions. NEWSLETTER FEEDBACK [Please let us know what you thought of today's newsletter in this three-question survey](. This newsletter was sent to {EMAIL}. [Read this newsletter on the web](. 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