Statement of Support for Restoring Anthropology / Ethnology on the List of Officially Recognized Disciplines in Poland
Dear Minister, Dr. Gowin,
With great interest and apprehension, we have been following the recent political developments in the field of education, specifically in academia, in Poland. As board and advisory board of the German Anthropological Association (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie e.V.), and in full agreement with our colleagues from the Polish Ethnological Society and international anthropological associations such as the WAU, WCAA, IUAES, and AAA, we wish to express our deepest concern in regard to the recently passed law on Higher Education and Science that merges several scientific disciplines, among them social and cultural anthropology/ethnology, into the umbrella discipline of “Cultural and Religious Studies.” In our view, the revocation of anthropology/ethnology as an officially recognized, self-standing discipline will have highly detrimental consequences for our colleagues at Polish universities, for the international academic exchange with Polish academia, as well as for the discipline itself. Read all