Jose Leonardo Santos
The political and economic landscape of research and education has drastically shifted in the United States in recent years. Anyone employed by the public sector, working in higher education, or building their future as a student knows this. Federal programs and grants are cut. University departments are reduced or eliminated. Students struggle to secure opportunities. People lose contracts, jobs, funding, and data, and endure great strain. Anthropology provides an important case study for understanding what is going on, and the resulting level of suffering.
The Society for Applied Anthropology’s last two conferences have focused on this, and three 2026 Presidential Sessions exemplified how anthropologists actively commune and strategize to confront the crisis. Following the meetings, the SfAA created a Public Sector Crisis Workgroup. Co-chaired by Anna Willow and me and includes the authors of these three pieces, it is charged with recommending strategic work to defend and advance anthropology in the public interest.
The pieces in this inaugural issue begin this work by sharing messages from the 2026 SfAA Presidential Sessions. Corona and Robbins describe a student-based session where undergraduates and graduates creatively articulated their struggles and needs. Santos and Willow summarize the experiences of anthropologists in higher education. Fiske and Winthrop recount experiences of current or former federal workers and contractors. Despite pertaining to different stakeholders, these sessions point to common challenges and strategies. Both policies from the second Trump administration and related shifts in higher education target work related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. These moves will have ripple effects in the future. Student pipelines and mentoring will be wrecked. Departments that oversee such work will be shuttered. Instruction around these issues will be cancelled. The populations we serve will be left without the support we provide. These widespread impacts are felt and exemplified in the experiences of those written about here.
Though the pieces that follow only begin to introduce these issues, they point to adaptive moves in anthropology and other disciplines in the face of logistical and emotional tolls of crisis. They combine resistance with strategic compliance, speaking out with laying low, adaptation with fidelity to cause and ethos.
And so, we spread the word. We must make clear what anthropologists are going through and remind the world of our discipline’s value. The practice of anthropology provides insights that few other disciplines can offer–mediation of diverse perspectives amid cultural change to make the world a better place. Anthropology speaks to the resiliency and adaptability of humans and their ingenuity in crisis. Confronted with our own crisis, we, too, are adapting by coming together, sharing, and renewing old relationships while forging new ones.
Read the series here:
Public Sector Crisis for Anthropology: Federal Workers, Researchers and Contractors
Shirley Fiske and Robert Winthrop
Uncertain Futures: Reflecting on the Crisis in Academic Anthropology
Jose Santos and Anna Willow
Cultivating Camaraderie during Crisis: Anthropology Students Respond to a Hostile Climate
Caprice Corona and James River Robbins
Contributors:
Jose Leonardo Santos
Jose Leonardo Santos is a cultural anthropologist and Professor of Social Science at Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis/St Paul, Minnesota. His research has evolved from a focus on immigration, to gender and religion, to issues affecting higher education. His teaching embeds career readiness through skill building and using ethnography to build cultural and social capital. He has written opinion pieces, commentaries, academic articles, and a book entitled Evangelicalism and Masculinity: Religion and Gender in El Salvador.
