Anthropology Prof Settles Lawsuit With San Jose State, Lands Job as ‘Heterodox’ Scholar

Anthropology Prof Settles Lawsuit With San Jose State, Lands Job as ‘Heterodox’ Scholar

This is a fascinating story and it’s great that it ends well for the professor.

The College Fix reports:

Embattled anthropology prof settles lawsuit with SJSU, gets gig as ‘heterodox’ scholar

After an 18-month legal battle with San Jose State University, anthropology Professor Elizabeth Weiss recently agreed to retire from her job to settle a lawsuit she filed against her employers.

Weiss, who had been effectively canceled by her department for ardently supporting the studying of Native American remains, will retire at the end of the 2023-24 school year with full retirement benefits and emeritus status as part of the agreement.

The courts had earlier ruled she could not be granted access to the bones she sought to examine over the objection of Native American tribes, so the settlement frees Weiss up to study collections elsewhere, even during her final year of employment with SJSU.

To that end, the anthropologist has accepted a position as an inaugural faculty fellow with the nonpartisan Heterodox Academy’s new Center for Academic Pluralism, which seeks to produce scholarship that supports intellectual and viewpoint diversity unencumbered by political correctness on campus, its website states.

Weiss is also poised to become a board member with the National Association of Scholars, which supports intellectual diversity and academic freedom.

Weiss and campus leaders “have reached an agreement in which she has voluntarily submitted her resignation effective May 29, 2024, and will dismiss her lawsuit,” the university said in a statement to the Mercury News.

Weiss told The College Fix she is pleased with the settlement.

“I will be able to conduct more research than would have been the case had I remained at SJSU,” she said via email. “I will have the time to visit collections that are available elsewhere.”

Weiss, who begins the Heterodox Academy faculty fellowship in New York this month, said she plans to visit museums, meet with curators, continue research work on bones, and present at the American Anthropological Association conference.

She said she is also looking forward to actively engaging with the National Association of Scholars and “their many fine members to help return academia to a focus on intellectual freedom and objective truths.”

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