Ousted SJSU professor: “Science” is slapping away truth for political correctness
This upper skeleton from Andrew Bell's “Anatomia Britannica” (1770s–1780s) appears to be tentatively inviting someone to grasp their hand. We wonder if they're smiling—or just waiting, silently, for an answer.
SJ State prof emeritus Dr. Elizabeth Weiss critiques—with James W. Springer in City Journal—today's anthropological trend of “social-justice ideology over verifiable facts.” Case in point? At SJSU, Weiss was censured (and blocked from research) for opposing reburying bones.
Many anthropologists place social-justice ideology over verifiable facts, from denying the sex binary to spinning false narratives of mass child graves in Indian schools to recasting “indigenous knowledge” as a source of scientific evidence. To this list add acceptance of Native American oral myths and creation stories. Arising from an ideology that divides humanity into oppressors and oppressed and rejects the concept of objective truth, such myth acceptance increasingly factors into questions of repatriation and reburial—whether, say, to give ancient skeletal and artifact collections to modern tribes whose connection to the remains may be obscure. The result: woke anthropologists and tribal activists exploit government rules to derail science, all in the name of social justice. …
Arguing that they must write their own history, activists aim to restrict anthropological research on North American Indians to subjects, topics, methods, and conclusions of which they approve. They maintain that the tribes must authorize any such research in advance, along with any findings before they are published or otherwise disseminated. Researchers must avoid forbidden topics, such as burial customs and stories of origins and migrations by their tribal ancestors. Anthropologists and historians face the dilemma of either doing no research at all or doing only research that confirms traditions and does not offend dogmas.
Government has been an important partner in this phenomenon. A 1990 federal law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)—expanded by sweeping administrative regulations under the Biden administration since its adoption—is a common tool of those seeking to forestall actual anthropological research. As currently interpreted, the law gives deference to “traditional knowledge,” requires the presence of “traditional Indian religious leaders” on NAGPRA committees and accords tradition the status of “expert opinion.” …
Some tribes forbid women from handling certain remains, warn pregnant women to stay away from certain objects, and require curators in museums and universities to engage in religious rituals—from prayers and “smudgings” to feeding masks and hanging a “devil’s club” over “spiritually dangerous” objects. … The Southeastern Archaeological Conference, an academic organization, has adopted a rule that, for funerary or sacred objects, only line drawings and not photos may appear in their journal and at meetings. The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) follows a similar rule, with the style guide for its journals stating: “Line drawings or other renderings of human remains may be an acceptable substitute for photographs.” …
When social-justice ideology in anthropology, federal government solicitousness of Indian tribes, and onerous legal rules combine, the result is a force field that halts scientific progress in its tracks.
Take the example of the La Jolla skeletons, a male and female dated at over 9,000 years old whose remains were discovered on the University of California–San Diego campus. Anthropologist Tim White and his colleagues tried to access these skeletons to improve on the rudimentary research that had so far been conducted—an isotope study done shortly after excavation as part of a larger study on diets and a NAGPRA report by San Diego State anthropologist Arion Mayes titled “These Bones Are Read: The Science and Politics of Ancient Native America.” Mayes’s conclusions cannot be assessed, replicated, or used in research, so more inquiry was necessary. But the bones were being repatriated to the Kumeyaay tribe, rendering them inaccessible. …
Professional and personal sanctions accompany any effort to fight back. When one of us (Weiss) sued San José State University, she was removed from curation duties; locked out of the room that held skeletal remains; prevented from accessing x-rays, data, and nonhuman faunal remains; and forbidden to use previously collected data. Weiss’s suit against San Jose State was handicapped when the judge decided that the Muwekma Ohlone tribe was a necessary and indispensable party to any claims concerning the interpretation of California’s repatriation laws (modeled after NAGPRA). The case proceeded with respect to any issues that did not involve Native American remains, data, curation policies, or materials related to the site, but a full resolution was elusive.
Read the whole thing here.
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