Diabolically Evil

Is a New Report About the Humanities ‘Diabolically Evil’? at The Chronicle of Higher Education.

 We invited four of the report’s authors — Kwame Anthony Appiah and Paul Boghossian, both philosophers at New York University; Katherine E. Fleming, a historian and former NYU provost who now serves as head of the J. Paul Getty Trust; and the Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz — to respond to their critics. We discussed their findings, the risks of outside interference, and what they hope happens next.

Anthropology was especially singled out for deteriorating standards of scholarship because of homage to political narratives. I recall there being excitement in the anthropology department when one professor was to give an address at a major conference - this would be in 1975 - about how voices from within cultures were not being heard often enough in the field. Notably, he was a Filipino anthropologist and thus positioned to notice, but also had a direct career stake in the issue. Even at the time, I recall thinking something along the lines that this wasn't about anthropology, but about anthropologists.