Jose Santos and Anna Willow
Read an introduction to this series written by Jose Leonardo Santos here.
Anthropologists at colleges and universities across the United States relate a sobering yet all too familiar story: faculty, staff, and students navigate the map of life and career but suddenly find that economic and government policies have radically redrawn the landscape. Former destinations for vocations and careers have been replaced by toxic spaces, if they still exist at all. Some anthropologists have expressed that everything they do is under attack, leaving some people to leave academia. At the 2026 Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) Conference, we moderated an open listening session called “Uncertain Futures: The Everyday Crisis of Applied Anthropology.” Focused on anthropologists in higher education, attendees reported candidly on campus life. From their stories, we locate a point of departure for offering everyone the opportunity to reflect and strategize, even as significant changes continue.
Their testimonies help frame what is happening, what it means, and what we need to do next.
What is happening?
Session participants identified the following common factors of their work:
- We are losing our jobs and the discipline’s position in the academy.
Enrollment declines, diminished funding, grant losses, academic cuts, and an already difficult career market worsened after January 2025. Job seekers reported scarce opportunities, and even positions cancelled mid-search. Graduate students and recent PhDs see dim prospects for an academic career. Untenured faculty find themselves without secure paths forward. Even tenured professors wonder if positions like theirs will continue to exist. The future of the field is at risk as the lack of positions means fewer mentors, pipelines, and places for anthropology to thrive.
- We are being censored and silenced.
Censorship, self-censorship, and the loss of academic freedom were repeatedly reported. Anything perceived as “woke” is now a potential target. Participants reported removing, at times by mandate, topics from course and grant descriptions, syllabi, and websites. Many self-censor what they teach and say in class, while some have switched research subjects or employment to seek safer paths.
- We are suffering emotionally.
Participants described fury, frustration, and hopelessness. Losing what hard work and love have built and seeing one’s mission under attack are traumatic experiences. Some felt trapped in contradictions, especially when making difficult ethical choices that leave them feeling “dirty” (for example, with censorship). Anthropologists confront existential quandaries around their purpose, priorities, and societal role as they ponder what is best for themselves and their families.
- We are not suffering equally.
Participants noted vast differences in vulnerability depending on stage of career (junior vs. senior), position type (contingent vs. tenure-track), state of residence (blue vs. red), topic of study (allegedly controversial vs. acceptable), and governance of institution (private vs. public). Some of us are far more vulnerable than others. Many anthropologists now wonder who holds the type of position that allows for an active response and what someone can safely do.
What does it mean?
What does it all mean for academic anthropology? US scholars are confronting a serious reassessment of higher education, dominated by intense fears of the loss of academic freedom, of threats to critical thinking, and of policy-makers’ obsession with a return on investment (ROI) by degree programs. When confronting a political climate that scorns social science and a public that increasingly distrusts education, academic elitism provides little protection. As the ivory tower crumbles, none of us are above these concerns.
Students, school administrators, auditors, politicians, scholars in other disciplines, employers— anthropology’s problems arise when these groups and others struggle to recognize the value it brings to education, careers, and society. Yet anthropology’s greatest strengths lie in its capacity to closely study people’s daily lives and help them understand and manage social change. As the United States continues to change rapidly, these skills become more essential for everyone. Developing, using, and teaching anthropology can address the national crisis and demonstrate its value. This obliges us to forge new relationships between the public, colleges and universities, industry, and national politics. Without this, we will continue to be eliminated and silenced.
What can we do?
Participants shared successful strategies they have developed.
These focus largely on an anthropological staple—using and building social and cultural capital.
We must actively seek and provide help. Anthropologists in crisis need each other’s skills and support. They also need new networks to replace what’s lost. Participants described how building social and cultural capital helped them in the following areas:
- Seeking out creative funding opportunities
- Labor organizing
- Seeking and providing mentoring
- Cultivating allies within and outside their institutions
- Leveraging and branding anthropological skills
- Protecting data from erasure
- Documenting malpractice
- Leaving toxic workplaces behind
With livelihoods and life trajectories at stake, our responses must be arrayed wisely. Strong emotions can alternately lead to paralysis or focused strategizing, so the emotional aspect of our experiences demands support.
Both individually and collectively, self-compassion, empathy, and wisdom are necessary.
We must seek our own ways to constructively cope with the situation at hand (for example, both authors choose to address their distress by studying the crisis in ways that support others).
For the 2027 SfAA meetings, we are developing specific sessions to help address this crisis. With our old maps no longer adequate, understanding the changes we are going through, their causes, and their effects helps us draw new routes—ones which are useful not only for ourselves, but for all who find themselves excluded and silenced.
Contributors
Jose 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.
Anna Willow
Anna Willow is a professor of anthropology at the Ohio State University. For two decades, she has explored how individuals and communities experience and respond to externally imposed resource extractive development. Recently, she has turned her attention to anthropologists’ experiences of and responses to changes in policy and political climate. Willow received her PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MS in natural resources and environment from the University of Michigan.
