“Eliminate Anthropology”: Attitudes toward social science in the public discourse

What do people think about anthropology and other disciplines in the social sciences and liberal arts? How do negative views of anthropology influence the discipline's future? A review of public discourse from news, commentaries, scholarly literature, monographs, and institutional reports reveals anthropology's current state and direction. The results point to great distress. Analysis demonstrates powerful disapproval of higher education, the liberal arts, and social sciences threatens the instruction, practice, and ethos of anthropology. Narrative domains in popular discourse reveal active attitudes demanding and executing audits, cuts, and closures of anthropology departments; legislation restricting teaching and research; and the dissolution of anthropology's legitimacy. This review demonstrates the existence and power of such popular narratives, analyzes how they reflect a common political-economic threat to the discipline, then asks difficult, critical questions before offering recommendations to confront one of the discipline's darkest moments.