From rhetoric to reality

Why we need an anthropology of higher education policy

Bibliographic Data

ID2260269
AuthorsKarla L Davis‐salazar (0000-0002-7099-5993, Department of Anthropology University of South Florida Tampa Florida USA), Emma Abell‐selby (0000-0002-3718-3635, Department of Anthropology University of South Florida Tampa Florida USA)
Year2025
Volume127
Issue2
Pages361-364
Publication date2025-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Anthropologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/aman.28059
OpenAlexW4408491430
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited17

In October 2011, then-Governor (now Senator) Rick Scott proclaimed the state of Florida did not need any more anthropologists (Gomberg-Muñoz, 2013). On May 15, 2023, current Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 266, which sanctioned a multipronged attack on public higher education, with disciplines like anthropology in the crosshairs. In a short 12 years, we had gone from rhetoric to reality. Backed by financial penalties for failure to comply, SB 266 lays the groundwork for the elimination of academic programs, curricula, and faculty in anthropology and allied disciplines. The list of laws and regulations restricting academic practices and programs in higher education grows. As of this writing, Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, and Utah will soon prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and offices, joining the ranks of Florida, North Dakota, and Texas, where bans are already in place (Gretzinger & Hicks, 2024). Closer to home, the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro was dissolved despite meeting all metrics set by the university (Andreatta and Brondo, this issue). Audit cultures are now full-on culture wars, and educational policy is a primary means of control (Canaan & Shumar, 2008; Hyatt et al., 2015; Strathern, 2000; also, Shore et al., 2011). The need for an anthropology of higher education policy is greater now more than ever. A critical anthropological lens goes beyond gauging policy effectiveness to explore how meaning making shapes policy processes and outcomes (Hamann & Rosen, 2011; Levinson et al., 2009, 2018; Shore et al., 2011). However, we have neglected this responsibility in higher education, perhaps because such investigations require an examination of our own academic practices (Posecznick, 2014). Here we offer our personal and professional experiences with two elements of SB 266. Emma, a third-year PhD student, considers general education and its implications for graduate students and faculty. Karla, a 20-year faculty veteran and former academic administrator, considers tensions with post-tenure review. With these brief forays exploring what we can learn from an anthropology of higher education policy, we hope to reinvigorate past and present calls for ethnographic studies of higher education policy processes (Gusterson, 2017; Hyatt et al., 2015; Wisniewski, 2000). With the passing of Senate Bill 266, it is now in statute that higher education institutions within the State University System of Florida are prohibited from expending funds to promote social/political activism and/or support diversity, equity, and inclusion. Additionally, this legislation prohibits general education core courses, which include Introduction to Anthropology, from teaching “theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities” (2023, 20). Institutions that fail to comply will not be eligible for performance-based funding. I (Emma) find that this legislation has become an added burden as an instructor of introductory cultural anthropology and a graduate student in anthropology. Teaching under SB 266 becomes challenging to manage as a new instructor, in tandem with being a graduate student, who must balance coursework, research, and assisting in teaching and other responsibilities (Abell-Selby, 2024). Although this legislation does not appear to be impacting the course I have been teaching, it has indirect effects. This is because the legislation has ignited a liminal state in the ebb and flow of uncertainty due to ineffective communication within the university and among graduate students and professors. My personal experience has led me to explore how other instructors are experiencing the ongoing legislation in their teaching practices. In my conversations with instructors, I have learned that there appears to be little discussion about the legislation, although it seems to be impacting teaching in the classroom in subtle and destructive ways. For faculty, the legislation has become a fourth unrecognized leg added to the teaching, research, and service stool. This is because faculty members must spend a considerable amount of time navigating the bureaucracy surrounding the legislation (such as Karla's experience with post-tenure review described below), which goes unacknowledged in their academic labor. In contrast, graduate student instructors expressed concern about how their teaching might be misconstrued by students in the classroom. This has led to increased fear of saying “the wrong thing,” as well as concerns about loss of funding, threat to livelihood, and future job prospects. My interviews also indicate that this legislation makes it more pressing and pertinent to teach the very topics that are under scrutiny (e.g., systemic racism)—especially if students are not given the opportunity to fully delve into these politicized topics during their secondary education. For some instructors, the legislation becomes a learning opportunity and a means for resistance—by continuing to teach complex topics (e.g., race) and facilitate conversations for students despite fears of potential repercussions. As an outcome of the study of higher education policy, I find that teaching social science courses requires a significant amount of emotional labor from the instructor to help students unlearn. Unlearning entails resituating how students think about race, gender, sexuality, and their own positionalities. However, this requires a tremendous amount of care from instructors as they introduce these complex topics. Thus, as instructors, we need to forge safe spaces for students (and ourselves) to have vulnerable conversations about the political polarization and ongoing precarities experienced within (and outside) the academy. As a required outcome of SB 266, the Florida Board of Governors (BOG) adopted regulation 10.003 Post-Tenure Faculty Review on March 29, 2023, which specifies timing, eligibility, review requirements, process requirements, outcomes, and monitoring and reporting for 5-year reviews of all tenured faculty at public institutions in the state. As required by the regulation, our university adopted its own post-tenure review regulation on August 22, 2023, and directed academic departments to develop post-tenure review criteria by September 30, 2023. The review process began on September 27, 2023.2 As someone who contributed to developing departmental post-tenure review criteria and went through review in the first year of implementation, I (Karla) found it important to distinguish between tenure and promotion and post-tenure review. Tenure and promotion, as I saw it,3 is a holistic assessment of a faculty member's scholarly accomplishments, addressing the yes-no question, Do your contributions to the discipline merit tenure and/or promotion? Answering this question requires an academic assessment. Post-tenure review, in contrast, is an evaluation of “productivity” measured over an arbitrary 5-year period, resulting in a rating of 1 to 4 (with 1 being the highest). Post-tenure review addresses the question, How well did you perform “the responsibilities and expectations” of your “assigned duties”? Answering this question requires an administrative appraisal. I therefore found myself saying, “Tenure and promotion define us as scholars. Post-tenure review defines us as employees.” This neat distinction, however, masks tensions in post-tenure review policies and practices that surfaced as I wrote my narrative. For example, the BOG regulation conflates tenure and promotion with post-tenure review, stipulating the use of “quantifiable” tenure and promotion criteria as a measure of “the level of accomplishment and productivity relative to the faculty member's assigned duties” (2). The regulation also carries penalties for “underperformance” and noncompliance with state laws and BOG regulations, ranging from “a performance improvement plan” to outright termination. Thus, post-tenure review removes scholarly endeavors from their disciplinary contexts where they have meaning and situates them in an audit context for which they were never intended. I therefore found it difficult to figure out what to write about my research, whether outputs or outcomes, and how to frame it. Certainly, there was no value in this exercise for me as an academic or scholar. Moreover, in keeping with neoliberal policies and practices, the regulation codifies the quantification of scholarly work, further stripping such efforts of their intrinsic value (Canaan & Shumar, 2008). As a result of these decontextualized accountings, “merit” criteria for faculty no longer concern the advancement of knowledge or contributions to society, but consist, rather, of institutional audits of “productivity” and “compliance,” making any academic assessment irrelevant despite faculty involvement in the review process. I therefore found myself writing for administrators, not for my academic colleagues. Post-tenure review, as I experienced it, is much more than an employee evaluation. Post-tenure review appropriates scholarly outputs as products of the organization, co-opting the academic labor of faculty and negating the role of the academic community. Importantly, I learned that some faculty support quantified accountings of scholarly outputs and “impact” as a primary way of measuring “accomplishment.” However, in reducing our scholarly work to outputs, we limit our academic roles and identities to that of employees, increasing our precarity within neoliberal institutions of higher education (Pérez & Montoya, 2018). And, when we participate (willingly and/or knowingly or not) in audit cultures that value only what is measurable, we reinforce the notion that only what is measurable is valuable (Shumar, 2020; Strathern, 2000). Post-tenure review in Florida serves as an example of the ways in which neoliberal policies increase competition, promote individualism, and diminish the value of anthropology. Let it also serve to remind us that our scholarly outputs are representations of meaningful learning and discovery processes (Shumar, 2020), building on generations of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). We should protect learning by learning about the organizations that employ us. An anthropology of higher education policy offers a means of elucidating the interpretation, negotiation, and contestation inherent in policy processes, or what Levinson et al. (2018) call “policy appropriation” to highlight the agency of policy actors. Studying higher education policy can reveal areas of agency as well as pockets of resistance. How do administrators and faculty respond to mandates? How are academics both implicated in and resistant to policy and legislation (Posecznick, 2014)? How do academic practices perpetuate harmful polarization? What are the implications for students? As we explore the human costs of changes in higher education, we must go beyond critiques of politicians and administrators and ask what we must do differently. Such inquiries, however, require an understanding of how universities work. Yet, we have a long way to go in this regard. But we can all carve out a little piece. In our own research, we have approached this from different angles. Emma continues to document and investigate the experiences of instructors with ongoing higher education legislative policies at a large public university in Florida. Karla has investigated power structures of administration (Davis-Salazar, 2024) and is currently investigating ways in which anthropology can be applied in higher education administration. Local ethnographic work, along with collaboration among anthropologists at multiple universities for ethnological comparison, will move us forward. But the study of higher education policy alone is insufficient. We must also reach across imagined battle lines and partner with our anthropologist-administrator allies. The ranks of higher education administration are filled with strategically positioned anthropologists (e.g., Colloredo-Mansfeld, 2023). While their responsibility is to the university, administrators are under many of the same pressures as faculty and students. We can equip our anthropologist-administrator colleagues with knowledge, data, and arguments. At the same time, we need to be able to explain the harm such policies do in ways that allow administrators to extend and deepen their debates. Well-informed allies in higher education leadership will both lobby and lead. SB 266 highlights the urgency of marshaling the tools of our discipline in defense of academia. One strategy is to investigate higher education policy processes and apply findings through collaboration with administrators and others positioned to exert influence. We need an anthropology of higher education simultaneously critical both of our own academic practices and of administrative procedures. So far, we have allowed research by others to set “best practices” for our professions. Failure to study our own academic practices allows others to dictate them. Taking back the roles of research and practice in higher education can revive our academic and anthropological communities. Divisiveness over the Tampa AAA meetings tests our capacity to unite. Can we have vulnerable conversations while strengthening our ties? Can we open ourselves to critique, rather than retreating inward and self-isolating as the discipline falters? The COVID era accelerated a process of decline in higher education. We must revive our academic communities in its wake. The time of weak resistance is past. As scholars, we must document and analyze the detrimental effects of emerging policy and legislation. Knowledge is power; we should play to our strengths as knowledge generators. Our detractors have taken the time and effort to learn about us, learning the names of our theories, highlighting our social critiques, and even pulling our emails. We must redefine academic freedom to focus on exchanges within the academic community of faculty and students. The legislature emphasizes the individual. We need the community.

Aesthetics · Art · Linguistics · Rhetoric · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Higher Education Governance and Development · Philosophy

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