Advocacy, Evidence, and Public Trust
Reflections prompted by the Vanderbilt report and the debate surrounding it
By: Abby Ross
I recently had an opportunity to read the Vanderbilt report and several responses to it. As someone who works outside academia but collaborates closely with researchers, I came away with mixed impressions. The report characterizes some areas of scholarship in ways that many researchers would reasonably dispute. Nevertheless, it raises questions that extend beyond anthropology and merit serious discussion.
One question I have considered a great deal this year in relation to TDARFAC’s work is the relationship between advocacy and scholarship.
Advocacy and research are not inherently opposed. Advocacy can bring neglected problems into focus, elevate the experiences of affected communities, and motivate researchers to ensure that their work has meaningful impact. Many important advances in conservation, public health, and social policy have emerged because researchers were willing to engage with urgent public concerns.
At the same time, advocacy and scholarship have different obligations. Our values may shape the questions we ask, the communities with whom we work, and how we apply our findings, but they should not predetermine our conclusions. When evidence challenges our assumptions or preferred approaches, our responsibility is to reconsider those assumptions or approaches—not to discount the evidence.
This principle is especially important in conservation, where well-intentioned interventions can have unintended ecological and social consequences. A commitment to a particular outcome should never prevent us from asking whether an intervention is effective, whom it benefits, what costs it imposes, or whether another approach might work better. Meaningful advocacy depends on a willingness to learn from evidence, including evidence that complicates our initial position.
The Problem with Generalizing Across Anthropology
I am very hesitant to generalize about anthropology as a whole, and I see the Vanderbilt report’s tendency to do so as a significant weakness in its argument.
Biological anthropology, archaeology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology draw on distinct methodological and theoretical traditions. They are also highly interdisciplinary, intersecting with fields such as ecology, evolutionary biology, history, sociology, linguistics, public health, and many others.
Treating this diverse intellectual landscape too uniformly risks extending criticisms of particular forms of scholarship to areas where they may be far less applicable. A concern that deserves serious attention in one subfield, institution, or research tradition should not automatically be treated as representative of the entire discipline. Any persuasive critique of anthropology must account for this internal diversity.
Anthropology’s Essential Contribution
Broadly speaking, one of anthropology’s most important contributions as a discipline has been its insistence that we question hegemonic assumptions and examine how power shapes the production of knowledge.
In conservation, this perspective has changed how researchers and practitioners engage with local and Indigenous knowledge, develop community partnerships, and assess the unintended consequences of outside interventions. It has encouraged us to ask who defines a conservation problem, whose knowledge is treated as authoritative, who participates in decision-making, and who bears the costs of a proposed solution.
These are essential questions. Asking them has made conservation more thoughtful, inclusive, and attentive to the people whose lives are most directly affected.
No analytical framework, however valuable, should be placed beyond criticism. Every framework benefits from empirical testing, constructive disagreement, and continued refinement. Examining the influence of power on knowledge production should not prevent us from examining the assumptions and incentives operating within our own institutions and preferred approaches.
Earning Public Trust
Regardless of how one assesses the Vanderbilt report, its publication and the responses to it point toward a broader concern: public trust in academic and scientific institutions cannot be taken for granted.
Trust is not strengthened by presenting scholarship as free from values, uncertainty, or disagreement. Nor is it strengthened by dismissing criticism simply because it comes from outside a field or challenges a favored position. Trust must be earned through transparency about uncertainty, openness to constructive disagreement, a willingness to publish unexpected or negative findings, and a clear commitment to following the evidence.
This is especially important at a time when academic programs face growing financial pressure and the climate and biodiversity crises demand both rigorous science and public confidence in the institutions producing it.
Advocacy can give scholarship purpose and urgency. Anthropology can help reveal assumptions, inequalities, and forms of knowledge that might otherwise remain overlooked. Evidence provides the discipline necessary to test our ideas and change course when they prove incomplete or mistaken. These commitments are not mutually exclusive. At their best, they strengthen one another.
The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent an official position of TDARFAC.
