Letter From the Chair
As chair of the UC Berkeley anthropology department, I write to express my department’s support for the initiative to un-name Kroeber Hall. The act of un-naming, as we see it, takes an important step in addressing and acknowledging a long history of violence toward Native Americans in which UC Berkeley and the anthropology department are implicated. This act gives momentum to the long-overdue work of repair for historical injury.
For anthropologists, it is crucial that we not let our fidelity to one of the discipline’s founding figures subvert this task — a labor that requires care, certainly in regard to generations past, but especially to the sentiments and sensibilities of living peoples who have experienced grave injustice. For this reason, my department unequivocally endorses the call, forcefully stated in last week’s op-ed by a group of Native students, to un-name Kroeber Hall.
We also applaud the authors of the op-ed piece for highlighting UC Berkeley’s failure to make adequate progress toward repatriating the vast number of Native American artifacts and human remains kept, in large part, in the storerooms of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, an institution without any formal relation to the campus anthropology department. Despite the passage of the California Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation, or NAGPRA, Act of 2001 and California AB 2836 in 2018, which aimed to specifically improve the UC system’s repatriation procedure, we recognize that UC Berkeley has too long continued to use the most conservative interpretation possible under these laws, discounting traditional tribal knowledge on cultural affiliation and committing yet another act of injustice to Native American peoples who have sought repatriation.
The proposal to un-name Kroeber Hall is an opportunity to reflect on the wide range of inactions that have done significant damage to the relationship of our discipline, department and campus with Native Americans in California and beyond. The faculty and students of the anthropology department are committed to playing an active role in supporting the recent, and significantly better, UC systemwide policy on repatriation and the important work of the NAGPRA Advisory Committee on campus, as well as learning ways to support UC Berkeley’s own Native American community through dialogue and listening.
Charles Hirsckind
Chair, Department of Anthropology
Assistant Professor - Biological Anthropology - Department of Anthropology
The Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley seeks applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position, in the area of Biological Anthropology, with an expected start date of July 1, 2021.
The ideal candidate will engage with critical questions in Biological Anthropology, and demonstrate consideration of the emergent properties of the human biocultural being with evidence of reflexive attention to the broader context of bioanthropological research in contemporary society. Current faculty specializations include tracing histories of development of human capacities for cognition, the effects of labor, health, and diet over the life course, and interests in the more-than-human and environmental situations affecting human development. The ideal candidate would complement these specializations and add to strengths in biological, archaeological and sociocultural anthropology.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are core values at UC Berkeley and the Department of Anthropology. Our excellence can only be fully realized by faculty, students, and staff who share our commitment to these values. Successful candidates for our faculty positions will demonstrate evidence of a commitment to advancing equity and inclusion. Successful applicants will have evidence of an ongoing research program (active fieldwork and/or lab, and/or museum/archival research), evidence of teaching effectiveness, and evidence of a commitment to increasing diversity and fostering inclusion in academia.
Basic qualifications:
The completion of all PhD or equivalent international degree requirements except the dissertation at the time of application.
Preferred Qualifications:
A Ph.D. or equivalent international degree in the candidates’ field is preferred by the start date.
The Anthropology Department is committed to addressing the family needs of faculty, including dual career couples and single parents.
To apply, please go to the following link: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF02675
All letters will be treated as confidential per University of California policy and California state law. Please refer potential referees, including when letters are provided via a third party (i.e ., dossier service or career center), to the UC Berkeley statement of confidentiality (http://apo.berkeley.edu/evalltr.html) prior to submitting their letters.
Applications must be received by October 30, 2020. Please direct questions to Professor Sabrina Agarwal, Search Committee Chair at agarwal@berkeley.edu.
For information about potential relocation to Berkeley, or career needs of accompanying partners and spouses, please visit the following website at: http://ofew.berkeley.edu/new-faculty.
The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age or protected veteran status. For the complete University of California nondiscrimination and affirmative action policy see: http://policy.ucop.edu/doc/4000376/NondiscrimAffirmAct.
Faculty Statement: Against Racial Injustice
We anthropologists of the University of California in Berkeley stand with those who condemn the suffocating weight of racial violence applied year after year to the lives and aspirations of black Americans; we express our outrage at seeing the breath of black Americans snatched away yet again by public noose and police knee; and we forcefully denounce a system of white supremacy that shields the lives and livelihoods of white citizens by throwing its black and brown citizens to the ravages of economic collapse and the entrenched biases of a health care system driven by corporate interests. As anthropologists and educators, we reaffirm our commitment to an anti-racist pedagogy and to the goal of bringing about the end of the structures of racial inequality that pervade American society and that culminate both in the mass incarceration of black Americans and in wanton acts of murder by officials working on behalf of the American state. As human beings, we despair of these killings and demand justice.
ANTHROPOLOGY COMMENCEMENT INFO SPRING 2020 -The Class of 2020 will have their ceremony together with the Class of 2021. We will provide more details soon.
Recent Stories
September 8, 2020
June 18, 2020
June 9, 2020
Brains and Language featuring Professor Terry Deacon
An Education in Anthropology
Anthropologists study human beings from every time period, in every way possible, and in all their complexity. Click here to learn more about what a degree in Anthropology can do for you.
The Department of Anthropology at Berkeley has long been ranked among the top five departments in the United States.
Berkeley Anthropologists have a history of innovation and leadership in emergent areas of the discipline, whether conducting their research in modern biological labs, in globalizing villages throughout the world, or at places being developed as sites of cultural heritage and national identity. The Berkeley faculty includes the largest number of winners of the J. I. Staley Prize(link is external), awarded annually to an outstanding anthropology book by a living author, the only discipline-wide award in anthropology.