Academic Radical Proposes Anthropological Assoc. Discuss Anthropology

“There hasn’t been a crisis this big in the AAA since the Vietnam War,” said Executive Director Ed Liebow.

Arlington, VA, June 8 – At the headquarters of this 10,000-strong organization, academics are reeling from the suggestion by one of its more extreme members that the American Anthropological Association engage in the heretofore unspeakable practice of studying anthropology instead of debating an academic boycott of Israel.

AAA executives confessed today they are struggling to come to terms with the radical nature of the proposal by Professor Wyer Weheer of Vanderbilt University that the association adhere to its stated mission of fostering greater American knowledge of, and interest in, the discipline of anthropology. Officials within the organization told reporters that many members are calling for the ouster of Professor Weheer from the ranks of the AAA, saying there is no room for such ideological extremism in the group. Others, however, support Weheer’s idea, or at least support open discussion and debate of it.

“There hasn’t been a crisis this big in the AAA since the Vietnam War,” said Executive Director Ed Liebow. “Professor Weheer’s extremist proposal may force this organization to decide once and for all what its mission is, and whether the mission statement we already have, on the basis of which our membership joined, means what it says it means.” He added that the debate would probably be healthy for the association, since engaging with dangerous ideas is what academic inquiry is all about, no matter how taboo a subject may be.

Professor Weheer himself argues that the organization has strayed far from its core values. “We need to get back to the business of anthropology, not politics,” he contended in a telephone interview. “Our expertise is best applied to describing religion as primitive and the development of human societies in terms that excuse nonwhite cultures for behaviors that, when done by white males, are oppressive and imperialist.”

AAA President Alisse Waterston said the question of whether the mission statement means what its words convey is animated by the strong undercurrent of sociology and and other “soft” sciences in the discipline of anthropology. “This organization has long held dear the axiom, fostered by our sociologist members, that language must be used to liberate, not control,” she explained. “The insistence that the AAA mission statement means what its says in anything resembling a strict sense is to endorse the tyranny of the written word, which is perilously close to endorsing the tyranny of cisgender normativity, which itself promotes the brutal Zionist occupation of Palestine, which only bigots and racists and pinkwashers support. We do not accept bigots and racists as we choose to define the terms. Twerk twerk twerk twerk twerk.”