By Tori L. Jennings, PhD
An anthropologist running for city council should hardly be that surprising. Our discipline after all, is highly applied. Not only is anthropology interesting we tell our students, it’s useful for tackling real-world problems. Two decades before Laura Nader challenged anthropology to “study up” in her provocative 1972 essay Up Anthropology, the idea of “action anthropology” had already taken root in the renowned work of American anthropologist Sol Tax. The legacy of an engaged action-oriented discipline suggests that anthropologists today should not only study people “up, down, and sideways,” we should also help the communities where we conduct our research. But what about the communities where we live and work not as researchers, but as citizens? Should we be engaged anthropologists confronting problems in our own politically fraught backyards?
What led me into local politics was not simply the absence of academics in places where policy happens, but the absence of anthropology when the need for it could hardly be greater. In 2015, I had been teaching anthropology as adjunct faculty at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for five years. During that time, Scott Walker was elected governor, Republicans regained control of the Wisconsin Legislature, and a stunning series of hastily passed bills curtailed collective bargaining for most public employees and teachers. Nationally televised images of protest marches and raucous sit-ins at the Wisconsin State Capitol reminded many of the Vietnam era. Energized by tens of thousands of demonstrators, indignant labor leaders and Democrats mounted a recall election confident that Wisconsin’s worker’s rights history and progressive ideals would emerge victorious. But Progressives misunderstood Walker’s conservative base and their adherence to the rhetoric of overpaid teachers, lazy public servants, and liberal academic elites who have no grasp of the real world. We were blind to this off-the-rails train wreck careening in our direction.
Much of this story is now well known. Walker comfortably won the Wisconsin recall election and the emboldened governor proceeded to devise a budget that would eliminate $300 million in funding from the University of Wisconsin system, which includes 25 statewide campuses and the flagship UW-Madison where I completed my PhD. As details of the 2015 state budget became known, an ominous mood descended over UW-Stevens Point where I was teaching 12 credits each semester. University administrators began planning cuts to balance an already beleaguered campus budget. Without warning their axe fell first on Anthropology, then on Human Geography, and then on an evolving list of staff and faculty positions and student programs. What ensued might best be described as an organizational restructure that conformed to Scott Walker’s edict that the role of education is to meet the state’s workforce needs. Walker’s budget provided the opportunity for a rapid institutional realignment from traditional liberal arts to a technology-driven business model of higher education, a national trend observed by economist and educator David Breneman in 1990.
Privately colleagues criticized the cuts UWSP administrators imposed, but avoiding the axe trumped any form of public resistance that might imperil one’s own program or position. As the mood around campus darkened and morale plummeted, I began asking colleagues from other disciplines why retiring faculty did not run for local office, for example mayor or city council, since bottom-up change seemed necessary to reshape the political landscape of Wisconsin. My question was often met with a bemused smile and an explanation that went something like: “Well, people who have been teaching and discussing these issues for years are too burned out when they retire; they just want to get away and do something different.” Unsatisfied, I persisted until one evening over dinner a researcher and close friend made a candid statement. “Because they feel [serving as an elected official] is beneath them.” The shoe fell with a thud, I bristled. Could it be true that actually doing what we discuss in the classroom and study as researchers is beneath us? I felt unnerved by the possibility that the conservative hostility aimed at “liberal academic elites” might have some basis in fact.
Since 2015, I increased my engagement in local politics, became a mayoral appointee to the city’s Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee, assisted the city with a successful Department of Transportation grant, organized community workshops, and worked to bridge the community and university through student service learning opportunities. Then on the evening of the 2016 presidential election as the election results rolled in and it became clear that Donald Trump would be the 45th President of the United States, I opened Photoshop and began designing my first campaign flyer. Five months later I won the election for Stevens Point City Council against a two-term incumbent by a 72.4 percent margin of victory. It is my hope that my campaign and novice alder experience in a small city in Central Wisconsin will inspire others to use their anthropological insight and experience to run for public office and shed further light on the importance of anthropology.
Tori L. Jennings is an adjunct professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. The primary focus of her research since 2003 has been the sociocultural and political dimensions of climate and climate change in the Cornish Peninsula, UK. She was elected to Stevens Point City Council in 2017.