In the (maybe not so) new millennium, anthropologists find themselves on both sides of the political spectrum

Nine years ago I published this article about anthropologists working with American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Today, Inside Higher Ed reports, "The American Anthropological Association has about 10,000 members, with one-fifth of them living outside the United States.
Many of the association’s members both in and outside the United States conduct research concerning immigrants and migrant populations, so they are unsurprisingly opposed to President Trump’s ban on travel -- since blocked by federal courts -- from seven majority-Muslim countries. And the organization's membership is unabashedly left-leaning over all.
The association’s leadership in Arlington, Va., is plotting how to channel the energy of members into constructive work under the Trump administration and a Republican Congress."

The article continues, "Last month, after the Idaho House education committee approved new science standards that deleted mentions of climate change and human impact on the environment, the association coordinated an op-ed by the anthropology department chairs at the state’s three largest universities that spoke out in favor of climate change education. The Senate education committee discussed the standards last week. And an AAA member, University of New Mexico anthropologist Valorie Aquino, is one of the organizers of the March for Science."

The discipline's principal association lists four main topics of concern:

1. Climate change
2. Health disparities
3. Social justice
4. Cultural heritage protection

Sounds like a pretty liberal agenda, all right.  Back when I wrote my article, called "My Kind of College Professors,"  the association and many of its members wrung their hands about colleagues being among the 'boots on the ground' in the two war zones.  This hand-wringing has persisted down to the present day.  Last year, American Anthropological Society members narrowly declined to boycott Israeli.  This suggests that anthropologists continue to straddle both sides of the political divide, as was the case in '08, when I published my piece.

And all this political-ethical-professional debate is much more than just academic "insider's baseball."  Anthropology remains in the 21st one of the most relevant of the liberal arts in a (very) real-world sense.