Anthropology is the study of humanity and its history — our behaviors, belief systems, biology, language — all the elements that make us who we are. With artificial intelligence platforms that can think for and seemingly relate to us, anthropology has become increasingly useful.
So it was with dismay that I read Megan McArdle’s July 20 column, “The interview that exposed academia’s cluelessness,” which was just the latest invective hurled at anthropological reasoning, higher education and, explicitly, me.
I spoke with the Chronicle of Higher Education about a recent paper that singled out anthropology, among a series of attacks on various academic disciplines, without offering much in the way of evidence. That interview was then excerpted by McArdle. She indicted scientific debate over gender and what she sees as our collective failure to “sell the value of higher education to the masses,” and defended using AI in research before concluding that the phrase “‘experts say’ no longer works.” She may be right on that last point. Those who write with derision may indeed drown out experts.
Reasserting trust in institutions and expertise is foundational to democracy. Debating and then setting standards for the appropriate use of AI in academic work is fundamental to truth. Accepting the discoveries made by geneticists and biological anthropologists is critical to public health, just as physicists are critical to bringing astronauts safely home.
In January, PEN America published a report chronicling the “full-blown ideological campaign” against higher education. It declared 2025 a year of “catastrophe.” McArdle’s column extends the streak.
Carolyn Rouse, Princeton, New Jersey
The writer is president of the American Anthropological Association
Megan McArdle’s July 20 column excellently captured anthropology’s pedagogic “hive of political groupthink” as highlighted in the “Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences,” which was commissioned by Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis. This issue is not limited to anthropology.
In my own professional experience as a social science academic, including as a reviewer of hundreds of books in the discipline, I’ve been continually astonished by the takeover of these fields by an alternative academic universe that bears little relation to the real world.
Numerous academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences now feature so-called critical studies. Making matters even worse, too many academic writings are filled with political jargon. Such is the problematic state of the profession that even academics who write clearly and critically on their own will refrain from criticizing their peers who overuse politically charged jargon, thereby leaving faulty theories and misuse of language unchallenged. It results in groupthink to the detriment of properly educating new generations of students to succeed in society by writing clearly, accurately and, most importantly, critically — in the best sense of the term.
Joshua Sinai, Potomac
The writer is a professor of practice in intelligence and global security studies at Capitol Technology University.
Megan McArdle reminded me of another critic of the ivory tower: Allan Bloom, author of the 1987 New York Times best seller “The Closing of the American Mind” and my adviser at the University of Chicago. Bloom loved to recount how he became anathema to the anthropology department by remarking this at one of their conferences: “Anthropologists are fascinated by the study of other cultures. In fact, the only people they aren’t interested in investigating are anthropologists.” The lack of self-awareness among America’s professorial class has only worsened since then, and McArdle put herself in good company by calling it out.
Michael P. Clarke, Kenosha, Wisconsin
I was a college faculty member long ago, and I have no quibbles with Megan McArdle’s dismembering of the inept interview of the president of the American Anthropological Association. Being correct and being a good debater are different intellectual attributes. McArdle’s piece calling out academics’ cluelessness could also serve well as a fill-in-the-blank format in which Republicans, Democrats, clergy, business titans and others could be substituted for “academics.”
George Perry Hoskin, Burtonsville
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