Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology Massively Threatened by Budget Cuts – Elimination of Our Only W3 Professorship Would Lead to Drastic Cuts in Teaching and Research

As part of the upcoming budget cuts by the Berlin Senate, the Executive Board of the Freie Universität Berlin has proposed eliminating the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology’s only W3 professorship, which is currently about to be refilled. Although this proposal is explicitly intended as a basis for the upcoming discussion process on implementing the cuts, if it were to be implemented, the institute would be forced to discontinue either its BA or MA program. Ultimately, this measure would lead to a drastic downsizing of our institute, which is extraordinarily successful in all areas of teaching and research.

The current structure of the institute is based on three structural professorships and their associated staff positions. Since the retirement of the previous chairholder, the continuation of the two consistently oversubscribed degree programs has only been possible thanks to the enormous efforts of numerous guest and interim professors. The professorship for Psychological Anthropology has remained vacant for over three years. Completely eliminating this position just before appointing a successor would undermine the very foundation of the institute: Psychological Anthropology is central to the national and international reputation of the discipline at this location in the capital. It has become a unique feature of our field here.

Moreover, this would also bring an abrupt end to the institute’s diverse research activities, including externally funded projects supported by the DFG (German Research Foundation) and various foundations. This would be unwise not only from an academic perspective but also from a research-economic standpoint. For over 15 years, the Freie Universität Berlin has benefited from the institute’s consistently high performance and its exceptional ability to attract third-party funding for an institution of this size. The Collaborative Research Center 1171 “Affective Societies: Dynamics of Living Together in a Mobile World,” which has been hosted by our institute since 2015 and originated from the field of Psychological Anthropology, alone has brought over €30 million to the university during its three funding phases.

However, it is not only the institute itself that is under threat in its current, highly successful, and internationally recognized form — the field of Social and Cultural Anthropology in Germany as a whole would suffer a significant blow from such a drastic cut. The Berlin institute trains a disproportionately high number of students; around 20 students graduate from the MA program each year, making it one of the largest in the German-speaking world. This means that a central hub for training the next generation of scholars in the discipline would disappear entirely — a hub that provides education in topics that are represented more prominently here than anywhere else, including Psychological Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, the Anthropology of Global Health, the Anthropology of Body, Gender, and Sexuality, and Ethnological Collection Studies.

Former students of the IfSKA (Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology) go on to pursue PhDs both nationally and internationally; they work in a variety of societal sectors, including culture, migration, and health, thereby continuously contributing to a differentiated and critical discourse in Social and Cultural Anthropology that tackles many of today’s most pressing societal questions. This critical voice is especially important in times of rising right-wing extremism and authoritarian tendencies. As an institute, we will do everything in our power to ensure that this voice grows louder — not quieter!

The extraordinary support we are receiving in this situation — from students as well as colleagues both nationally and internationally — is incredibly encouraging:

It is beyond question that all institutes and departments at the Freie Universität Berlin must face certain restrictions. But these cuts must not be so disproportionate that they endanger the existence of such a successful institution as the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology.