Re: American Anthropologist

Ralph L Holloway (rlh2@COLUMBIA.EDU)
Thu, 22 Feb 1996 12:35:34 -0500

On Thu, 22 Feb 1996, Ruby Rohrlich wrote:

> At least physical anthropology is still being taught albeit under other
> somewhat different names. Whereas Mike Salavesh pointed out that after
> the l970s anthropologists with Ph.D.s had not taken linguistic courses.
> Which I suspected, judging from some on this list. Ruby Rohrlich

I thought Mike's post had more to say about the loss of the four-field
orientation than merely that linguistics wasn't taught since the '70's.
As usual, your sweeping generalization is in error, at least as far as
Columbia is concerned. Linguistics was still a part of our curriculum
until Professor Harvey Pitkin took early retirement in the late '80's or
early '90's, and that came in the context of a general University lack
of support for what was our Linguistics department, a history I'd rather
not discuss any further. As for physical, I haven't
seen any cultural anthropology graduate students in the Human Evolution
course specifically designed for them since the late '80's, when the Gang
of Four (or Three) took over the department and ran it as they saw fit .
As to what is happening
generally in the field of anthropology regarding the teaching of
physical, I'm not in a position to comment. Your post is certainly not in
the spirit of Mike's, and why you would take it as an opportunity to be
snide about people on the list regarding their exposure to linguistics
because some occasionally uses Mankind rather than Humankind is surely
tiring to all of us.
Peacefully,
Ralph Holloway