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How can students learn well if teaching is not experiential, anthropology professor asks
In some California college classrooms, the display of Native American cultural artifacts – and even images of these items – continues to be banned.
However, another higher education institution scrapped plans for a similar moratorium in response to pressure from a campus free speech group.
In a revised policy published Nov. 13, the California State University System removed a section that banned using images or replicas of Native American remains or cultural items in teaching or research on its campuses. The policy has to do with compliance with the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA.
This is “good news,” free speech attorney Ross Marchand told The College Fix.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, where Marchand works as program counsel for policy reform, wrote to the public university system earlier this year outlining its concerns about the classroom ban.
“That ban overstepped both the First Amendment and NAGPRA itself, which doesn’t restrict such use. We had written CSU criticizing that policy, and the university system evidently listened,” he said in a recent email.
CSU spokesperson David Alvarado confirmed the Nov. 13 policy is the final version.
“Consistent with the policy, the CSU will reopen it in one year for review and potential revision, guided by continued consultation with Tribal Nations, campuses, and stakeholders,” he told The Fix in an email Tuesday.
When asked about the moratorium being removed, Alvarado said the new policy still includes “best-practice language recommending that campuses obtain written free, prior, and informed consent from all culturally affiliated or potentially affiliated Tribes before using, reproducing, or distributing images or replicas of Native American remains or cultural items.”
Meanwhile, the Los Rios Community College District, which oversees four public colleges in California, still has a similar ban in place.
The policy, which went into effect in 2023, prohibits its faculty from using Native American cultural items, human remains, and images or reproductions of these items or remains in teaching and research — unless they have obtained the tribe’s consent, according to the policy documents previously reviewed by The College Fix.
FIRE has written to the district three times, urging it to revoke the policy. According to the campus free speech group, “The First Amendment — which binds public colleges and districts like Los Rios — forbids such broad, content-based restraints on teachers instructing their students.”
“Unfortunately, there continues to be a moratorium on the ‘use or creation of images and reproductions of Native American human remains and cultural items,’” Marchand told The Fix.
Professors in the district also have expressed concerns about the policy hindering academic freedom.
Debi Worth, a professor of dance and anthropology at Folsom Lake College, asked how students are expected to learn well if teaching is not experiential.
“I will always be in support of, and champion academic freedom, freedom of speech, and pedagogy that aligns with human mutual respect,” she told The Fix in a recent email, when asked about the policy. “Using replicas should not be subject to moratorium, in my opinion.”
Previously, another scholar told The Fix that the teaching ban is “like a sledgehammer to our collections.”
“Students who decide to pursue forensic anthropology, for example, will be at a disadvantage by not having had access to 1. Real human skeletal material, and 2. A full range of diverse replicas of human skulls, illustrating human variation,” the professor told The Fix earlier this year. “Do we want our future doctors only trained on subpar plastic materials?”
However, others in the district declined to comment or did not respond to The Fix’s requests for their opinions about the policy.
Sacramento City College sociologist Belinda Lum responded by referring The College Fix to the media relations office. However, the media relations office did not respond to several requests for comment via email, asking about the policy, FIRE’s letters, and academic freedom.
The district website states the moratorium was implemented at the request of and out of respect for the district’s tribal partners, as well as the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
MORE: Professors can’t show images of Native American ‘cultural items’ in some California colleges
