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Dr. Sarah A Lacy @professorlacy.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Hope to have a "robust response" soon...

Reposted by Dr. Sarah A Lacy

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

The AAUP chapters at Vanderbilt & Wash U have issued a joint statement denouncing the “State of Scholarship” report commissioned by their chancellors. Please, let’s make this as widely read as the gaslighting to which it responds.

Joint Statement on the "State of Scholarship" Report
The Vanderbilt University and Washington University chapters of the American Association of University Professors express our profound disagreement with the "State of Scholarship" report commissioned by our universities' chancellors. The report distorts the state of humanistic and social scientific scholarship at our universities and in the academy overall. Worse, it proposes a shocking intrusion of university administration into faculty governance and portends greater threats to academic freedom that should concern all faculty.
The report currently appears on Vanderbilt's website under the insignia of both Vanderbilt and Washington Universities. It is already receiving public condemnation. As the American Council of Learned Societies makes clear, the report is founded on false premises and anecdotal evidence and thus does nothing to "ensure deeper and more meaningful relations among scholars and members of the public." No doubt more rebuttals from scholars, departments, and professional societies will follow. It suffices for us to say that the report falls far short of the standards of political neutrality and disinterested inquiry it claims to champion. Historians, literary scholars, and anthropologists are singled out for caricature while the authors fail to acknowledge their own public biases against scholarship performed in the name of social justice. Nor does the report divulge its source of funding or conflicts of interest that may entail - standard practice for any work of humanistic or social scientific scholarship. In sum, the report is itself a clear example of "politicized" research that its authors attempt to decry.
What is most alarming is the guidance the report offers to its intended audience of university chancellors and presidents. By falsely arguing that humanities and social science departments are in the throes of an epistemological crisis, the authors lay the groundwork for university adminis…

Weakening faculty governance does nothing to solve the real challenges facing our universities, and undermines our ability to effectively address society's most profound problems and challenges, from the inequalities of wealth and white supremacy to the political consequences of climate change.
Indeed, the direst threats to public trust in higher education are not philosophical debates about the nature of truth. Currently, the federal government is dramatically cutting funding for the humanities and social sciences as well as for the natural sciences, engineering, medicine, public health, and the arts. In response, university administrations have instituted austerity measures, even as administrative salaries and administrative positions have taken up an increasing share of decreasing budgets.
The best way for scholars to cultivate diverse opinions and advance knowledge is by strengthening academic freedom. Political threats to higher education have degraded, and will continue to degrade, the quality of all fields of our universities' research, to the detriment of America's global standing.
We note that the organizations now working most actively and successfully to defend academic free inquiry from politicized federal interference are not university leaders but the American Council of Learned Societies, the Modern Language Association, and the American Historical Association - professional societies of the very disciplines chastised by the report.
We call on our chancellors to rescind the report and affirm their commitment to the intellectual autonomy of faculty, academic departments, and governing faculty bodies. Administrative interference into academic departments, as licensed by this report, is a violation of the standards of academic freedom that have made American universities the envy of the world. Rather than undermining these bedrock principles, administrators should vigorously and publicly defend them.
Vanderbilt University AAUP
vanderbiltaaup@gmail.com
Wa…

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Dr. Sarah A Lacy @professorlacy.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

What about archaelogists? We keep releasing curses.

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Dr. Sarah A Lacy @professorlacy.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Are you looking for a summer field school? My Neanderthal one is paused right now, but my Macedonian colleagues are at Amzabegovo, one of the earliest Neolithic sites in Europe (and Gimbutas worked here all the way back in the 60s). I can promise fantastic food! www.bhfieldschool.org/program/birt...

bhfieldschool.org

Birth of Europe - Excavations at the Neolithic site of Amzabegovo

Balkan Heritage excavation and field school at the Neolithic Settlement Amzabegovo , North Macedonia.

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Dr. Sarah A Lacy @professorlacy.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

The connection between masculinity and meat-eating in our culture is likely what fueled some of the very negative reactions on the internet to the idea that ::gasp:: women hunted too! (and I'm quoted!)

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Reposted by Dr. Sarah A Lacy

Biological Anthropology Women's Mentoring Network @bawmn.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Get excited!! 👏👏 - The BAWMN has organized several events during the #AABAs2026! We hope to see you there! Below is information on the workshop, the World Cafe (registration required), and our popular Happy Hour:

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Dr. Sarah A Lacy @professorlacy.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

I love reading John's substack, but this one has me particularly chuffed since he is highlighting the part of this new paper that got me most excited (and was ignored in a lot of the coverage). He gives a great summary of identifying matrilineal kin networks/ -based migration in the human genome.

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Dr. Sarah A Lacy @professorlacy.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

@bawmn.bsky.social is offering an intimate World Café luncheon March 19th at the AABAs on the timely theme of Collective Action ~ a chance to really connect and reflect in a relaxed setting over a delicious Italian meal. Register here: forms.gle/vXsTK8EWPf9A...

forms.gle

BA WMN World Cafe Registration

The Biological Anthropology Women’s Mentoring Network (BA WMN) is open to graduate-level women and gender-minoritized AABA attendees regardless of academic rank or current employment status. Our missi...

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Reposted by Dr. Sarah A Lacy

UoL EvoAnth Seminar Series @liverpoolevoanth.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Please join us next week, 9th October 2025, at 13:00 BST, for our next seminar of the semester. We will be joined by @professorlacy.bsky.social, University of Delaware - more details 👇 If you'd like to join, please register here: liverpool-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/regi... We hope to see you there!

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Dr. Sarah A Lacy @professorlacy.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

So basically all anthropology research?

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Reposted by Dr. Sarah A Lacy

Meg Pickett 🏳️‍⚧️🪐🛼🧀🖖🏳️‍⚧️ @deviled-meg.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

1/19 In November 2023, @caraocobock.bsky.social and @professorlacy.bsky.social wrote in Scientific American: “The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather is Wrong.” (Link below). Much gnashing of teeth ensued. The authors have aptly defended the work. Yet the gnashers are back.

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Dr. Sarah A Lacy @professorlacy.bsky.social · 19/10/2023

Having the cover article in Scientific American @sciam.bsky.social is one of the great highlights of my career <3

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Reposted by Dr. Sarah A Lacy

Cara Ocobock @caraocobock.bsky.social · 10/10/2023

Our (the amazing @professorlacy.bsky.social) articles got a nice write up in South Africa. Thank you to Rebecca Rogers Ackermann for putting us in touch with Elsabe Brits! www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023...

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Reposted by Dr. Sarah A Lacy

MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 12/09/2023

Argues that not only women well-suited to endurance activities like hunting, but there's little evidence to support they were not hunting in the Paleolithic. Woman the hunter: The archaeological evidence 🧪 Sarah Lacy, Cara Ocobock anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Portraits of Paleolithic women
by @TomBjorklundArt

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