2024 was a devasting year for anthropology and archaeology. The new regulations in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and the newly passed additions to California’s repatriation laws (CalNAGPRA) resulted in the shuttering of university museum exhibits, moratoria on the use of previously collected data from any Native American sites, and calls to go after retired professors who may have access to skeletal remains, artifacts, or data. Also, there was a continuation of denying that sex is biological and binary, which resulted in another sports scandal at San José State University. Most recently, to end the year, the Freedom from Religion Foundation removed a blog post by University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne about the binary nature of sex, which resulted in Richard Dawkins and Harvard University’s Steven Pinker resigning from the foundation’s board.
With Trump’s election, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) bans—that replace identity politics with a meritocracy—passing in multiple states, and the inception of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), one may expect to see a reduction in wasteful spending on woke regulations that hinder our ability to study the past and train future forensic anthropologists. We may also be hopeful that the transgender madness—which has put women at real risk of sexual abuse when biological men enter women’s restrooms—is nearly over, especially when seeing news stories of the backlash against men in women’s sports and the restrictions placed on sex change treatments for children in Europe.
However, my predictions for 2025 are bleak, especially for anthropology and archaeology. Here are my top three predictions.
(1) More absurd repatriation and reburials will empty university research and teaching collections. Just last month Harvard University acquiesced and will be giving their collection of Native American hair to tribes—a process that began in 2022. Hair, as a result of NAGPRA regulatory changes, is now explicitly regarded as “human remains.” The hair was clipped from Native American children getting haircuts – these were no scalpings! This is unfortunate because the study of hair can reveal important and interesting information about relatedness, stress, and diet.But, it’s not just human remains and artifacts that will be given to tribes; charcoal, soil, coprolites, and more will be claimed for repatriation to keep the NAGPRA gravy train rolling. The latest such repatriation comes from the University of California, Los Angeles—they plan on repatriating clay, stone fragments, burnt acorns, soil samples, and much more. The money spent will be for repatriation ceremonies but also the hiring of repatriation staff in universities. These positions will take the place of scholars interested in studying collections rather than burying them!Recently, Science has published a glowing article on the attempt to repatriate animal remains—such as the white bison displayed in the Montana Historical Society Museum—from museum and university collections. This movement will end research in zooarchaeology, zoology, and shutter even more museum exhibits!
(2) Anthropological conferences will continue to move away from meetings of the minds to share the latest discoveries and increasingly become woke gatherings concerned with identity politics and engaging in censorship. I’ve written about the American Anthropological Association’s decision to cancel a panel on the biological and binary nature of sex, where I was to present on how sex shapes bones and how forensic anthropologists use this information to help identify homicide victims, thereby bringing closure to families of those victims. The latest American Anthropological Association conference started with a plenary on the ethical treatment of human remains, which proposed that future conference attendees take an ethics pledge that would include an agreement that they will not share digital materials, including maps, that were derived from information that came from human tissues, including DNA, “on social media or other non-password protected internet sites, including educational sites, and museums.”At the Society for American Archaeology—another organization that has canceled one of my talks —the 2025 meeting is linked to a lengthy “meeting safety policy and event code of conduct” page that includes forbidding “offensive jokes.” One attendee from last year’s conference has been given a multi-year attendance ban because he told a joke that someone else overheard and reported to the conference organizers (the Stasi would have been proud)! Now, this “no joke” policy is officially in place.And, finally, the American Association of Biological Anthropologists conference is providing “neurodiverse” attendees with quiet rooms, fidget spinners, eye masks, and ear plugs. They call neurodiversity “a valuable form of human diversity;” and, then, go on to explain that:
The idea that there is one ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ type of brain or neurocognitive functioning, is culturally constructed fiction, no more valid than the idea that there is one ‘normal’ or ‘right’ ethnicity, gender, or culture.
Thus, as they have done with disorders of sexual development to promote the false “sex is nonbinary” agenda, anthropologists are once again mistaking (or, perhaps, misrepresenting) abnormalities or pathologies with normal variation. Perhaps “neurodivergence” is the new “trans” fad.
(3) Universities will continue to worship at the DEI altar. Although there have been stories of universities abandoning DEI statements for hiring faculty and admitting students, other universities will double down on their DEI agenda. For example, the University of California, Santa Barbara is looking to fill a Vice Chancellor for DEI position with a salary between $250,000 to $430,000 a year! And, colleges continue to have DEI statements, such as at California State University, San Marcos whose DEI statement ends with: “As an actively anti-racist institution, we dismantle systemic barriers in ways that nurture the well-being of all members of our campus community.”Another example of the continued growth of identity politics at universities is Sacramento State University’s “Native American College,” which will begin to accept students in the Fall of 2025. This new college aims to provide minors in Native American Studies that include classes in tribal leadership. As Native Americans will run it for Native Americans, you can bet that evil white colonizers will be unwelcome! Yet, the classes will likely be very small. There are reportedly around 800 Native American students in all of the 23 California State University campuses and perhaps 79 Native Americans at Sacramento State University. But, even these numbers are likely to be grossly exaggerated, as I’ve discovered universities are prone to do. At San José State University, the number of Native American students was at one time reported to be 750, when the actual number was less than two dozen. And, a quick look at the data from Sacramento State reveals that in the last twelve years, there have never been more than 10 students minoring in Native American Studies in any one year. Yet, never was so much given to so few by so many!
In short, my prediction is that 2025 will be business as usual in universities. I hope that I’m wrong, but with Trump’s election, I think we’ll see more hysterics than historical changes in academia.
Image by Aliaksandr Marko — Adobe Stock — Asset ID#: 396101293
