A Department at a Crossroads
In the strictest sense, I am not affiliated with the Yale Department of Anthropology. Since Archaeological Studies is an "interdisciplinary" major, we don't have our own department; we have a Council. (Kind of like the Jedi. We're that cool.) But, when push comes to shove, most of our professors are bona fide members of the Anthropology Department, so I personally care very stongly about its reputation.

This reputation has dimmed quite a bit of late in the progressive community due to the firing last spring of anarchist professor David Graeber. Graeber, who is appealing the decision, apparently was fired for political reasons. Now the left has adopted Graeber as their martyr in the quest for academic freedom. The well-circulated Counterpunch interview with Graeber has inspired much blog-based discussion.

According to some professors and grad students (especially, I think, the pro-Graeber faction), the department might lose up to six members this year, a"mass exodus" supposedly due to the Graeber decision. This really disturbs me. Perhaps it is too selfish of me, but I don't want to see the institution that trained me suddenly erupt in scandal and chaos at the time when I'm applying to grad schools. A Yale Anthro degree, so recently an unarguable mark of prestige, is at risk of becoming shameful.

If I seem strangely ambivalent about this whole thing, I am and I'm not. (Haha! Meta-ambivalence! Wow, I'm so deep.) I took Professor Graeber's Myth and Ritual course last spring and loved it. I found Graeber to be not only an effective and enlightening professor but also incredibly entertaining, and was shocked and angry to hear what had happened. I signed the petition in his support. Obviously I belong, wholeheartedley in fact, to that "pro-Graeber faction" I mentioned with some implied skepticism above.

Yet there are several things about the pro-Graeber faction, if not its cause, that make me uneasy. First, for reasons I have already articulated, I want the whole scandal to go away, and if I know Graeber, it won't. Secondly, I'm not sure I trust Graeber and his inner circle of supporters to fight this just fight in the most tactically wise way. Graeber has stood up for GESO (Graduates' Excessively Spoiled Organization) in the past, which makes me think his disparaging of the "imperial university" is a bit exaggerated. He claims that there were three or four profs in the department who went after him like bullies. I'm no insider, but I honestly can't think of who any of these people are. I'm fairly confident that none of my profs on the Council were involved, since the subfields of anthropology tend to move in separate circles. But then again, who knows. Maybe I just am too innocent, but I don't want to believe that Graeber was fired for political reasons alone. I guess I'd rather have my opinion of one professor slightly tarnished than that of my whole department.

What does that say about me? I'm not sure. But I'm afraid that this will tear our department apart. If the "mass exodus" does occur, many students will be left without advisors and mentors, many staple classes will vanish, and our education will suffer. It brings to mind GESO's decision to strike right before undergrad finals week last year: protesting at the expense of the greater educational good. If I were David Graeber, I would encourage my collegues who are tempted to leave in outrage to stay at Yale in order to preserve the remaining integrity of the department. If I were the so-called "bully" senior faculty, I would reconsider the decision to fire Graeber in terms of academic freedom but also in terms of its larger impact on their own insititution.

But I'm not any of these people. I'm not even really part of this department. So I'll just sit back, relax, watch the socioculturalists' drama unfold, and be grateful my B.A. will read "Archaeological Studies" on it in 2007.