Shirley Fiske and Robert Winthrop
Read an introduction to this series written by Jose Leonardo Santos here.
At the 2025 SfAA in Portland, the room was filled with anthropologists in shock and anger at the indiscriminate DOGE process of eviscerating vast swaths of federal agencies and employees, targeting job titles, grants, and contracts. This report is from the 2026 follow-up session in Albuquerque. We asked how the policies of the second Trump administration affected the careers of anthropologists, other social scientists, and students. Here are stories from those two sessions. The names of individuals are changed to protect anonymity.
Layoffs, reassignments, and the growing employment crisis
Barely four weeks after Trump’s inauguration, Jared W. got an abrupt email telling him that his contract with USAID had been cancelled and to turn in his laptop by “next Tuesday.” In fact, the entire agency was dismantled. Disbelief, concerns for his future and career followed him for months.
Laurel T. got an email in February 2026, stating that her job was being eliminated. Her options were to take the Deferred Resignation Program (take administrative leave until the end of the year, and then leave or retire) or remain in her job and take her chances with likely Reductions in Force during the year. Ultimately, she chose forced retirement; shock and anger were her companions for months, but the immediate next weeks were spent downloading program data onto external drives to preserve the program beyond the Trump administration..
During the summer 2025, Megan F. was summarily transferred from her high-visibility job in an environmental regulatory and science agency and “re-directed” to another part of the agency. Her expertise was effectively discounted, and her programs were canceled, but she still had a job.
Yolanda G. at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was fired along with half of her division, and their website was shut down. By March 2025, she was outraged and in full legal action mode. She pointed to a successful campaign to restore funding to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, suggesting that SfAA join a number of lawsuits against the Trump administration’s actions.
Grant and Contract cancellations and surveillance
In mid-2025, Alan W., a health researcher in a state office, received the news that his NIH grants were suddenly gone. As an early career anthropologist, he was terrified and took the cancellation of funding as a personal threat. Fortunately, the state stepped in to help continue some of the funding, but not many anthropologists in the same position are as lucky. “Some funding is gone forever.”
Joshua P. works for Veterans Affairs, with an appointment at a university in a Red state, and his research is funded by a federal health agency. He has not lost his job but commented that he has never felt so surveilled in his life. He reluctantly agreed to re-word his grant to ensure that it would not be cancelled and the findings would be available.
Amber L., a tenured professor at a state university, feels the weight of surveillance everyday, especially when she is writing her research results. She works on topics related to marginalized groups, environmental justice, diversity, and inclusion. “If I can’t use those [specific] words, my writing becomes meaningless, and I can’t publish the results [in good conscience].” Further, she stated that because of the uncertainty over federal funding, she can’t ethically recruit students to work on the research.
Damage to student pipelines and research funding
Graduate students reported receiving emails from federal funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation, instructing them to “re-frame” their research questions away from racial and ethnic themes, even while the thesis was centered on Native American and indigenous experiences in education and public health.
Students raised concerns about the availability of post-docs and fellowships, given the targeting of DEIS and social sciences, specifically anthropology. One early career anthropologist reported that “all Fellowships have been cancelled” in the agency in which she had a Fellowship. Fellowships and post docs are critical steppingstones in the graduate pipeline into research and academic careers
Raising the hackles of academics and researchers is the proposed OMB rule that would alter merit-based peer review for grant proposals by requiring a “threshold review” by a political appointee, prior to consideration by the program director. In fact, peer reviews would be considered “advisory” rather than the primary expertise for funding. This kind of political scrutiny affects anthropology careers, departmental viability, and graduate career pipelines directly.
Strategies and Actions
Much discussion in the session addressed “what can we do?” at an individual level and at an organizational level, such as through SfAA. Main points are listed below to provide a range of possible actions.
Build alliances. There’s strength in building alliances with other organizations offering resistance to the changes and cuts being proposed, such as AAAS, NPCA, and AGU and COSSA.
Develop advocacy. Develop relationships with legislators and committees at state and federal levels. Focus lobbying efforts on Congressional appropriations and programs that support anthropological methods and graduate student funding. Focus on rebuilding the pipeline, restoring funding for fellowships and postdocs.
Join a lawsuit. Examples include litigation by ACLS and AAAS. AFGE has filed litigation on behalf of workers at multiple agencies. SfAA could provide expert testimony or amicus briefs.
Develop career tools. On the departmental and individual level, focus on providing skills for changing careers and finding jobs in this tumultuous environment. Invest in “skill-building” sessions to enhance anthropologists’ ability to relate our research to the public and to demonstrate our abilities to solve problems.
Provide professional support. Provide space, both virtual and in-person at SfAA meetings, for social support for those facing cancelled grants, ended careers, job loss, lack of funding or students’ confusion about viable career directions.
Document the problem and adaptations. Document the crisis: provide personal stories, and find data at the departmental level and within federal agencies. Several efforts are on-going: Anna Willows’s research on how anthropologists have been affected by budget and policy changes; WAPA’s documentation project; and AAA’s Anthropology Watch webpage.
Contributors
Shirley Fiske
Shirley J. Fiske is a Research Professor at University of Maryland. She is an environmental anthropologist with career experience in the executive and legislative branches of the US government, whose work has been dedicated to augmenting the voice of social sciences, and anthropology in particular, in natural resource management, environmental and climate policy issues. She just finished (2024) an Ethnographic Overview and Assessment of Rock Creek Park for the National Park Service, National Capital Region.
Robert Winthrop
Robert Winthrop is an environmental anthropologist and a research professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland, College Park. He has worked as a consultant, a US government social scientist, and an academic, focusing on energy and resource extraction, climate change, indigenous rights, and social impact assessment. Previously he served as senior social scientist at the Bureau of Land Management, US Department of the Interior. He is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Society for Applied Anthropology.
