Column: Keep BAA

Talk to an evolutionary biologist long enough and you'll eventually hear the words "minimum population size." It's a simple concept: If a group's numbers dip below a certain point, it has no hope of survival. I was 17 when I learned this lesson in Biological Anthropology and Anatomy 93, so I know it's one a teenager can easily comprehend. Why then can't Duke's administrators? There's little other explanation for their recent decision to cut the BAA faculty below its critical minimum, from 17 to six - either they don't understand that this will result in the department's extinction, or they are hoping for just such an outcome. It's hard to say which makes them look more foolish.

Today, administrators are meeting for the first time with the BAA faculty. They have already written in The Chronicle that it's all been a "misunderstanding" - that external reviews and the professors themselves have "repeatedly endorsed" consolidation within Arts and Sciences, which is driving the plan to shrink the department. This is baloney. Consolidation plans aside, no professor has argued that BAA should have only six people and for good reason. Duke leads the field in the number of papers published. With six on staff, either research will drop off or undergraduate education will suffer (or, most likely, both). Sure, there will still be Curriculum 2000-friendly classes like BAA 93. But there won't be enough people to teach advanced classes or tend to the Primate Center - which, as it happens, the higher-ups have been targeting for years. The department will find itself overwhelmed, and it may eventually die.

Every argument the BAA professors can make deserves to be heard until it is answered, not brushed off as a "misunderstanding." Today the administrators will hear pleas from bright young academics who came here because they thought their efforts might be rewarded with tenure, or at least valued. If there has been any misunderstanding, it was clearly theirs. Frankly, they may be better off leaving: The department's rankings will plunge as scientists come to view Duke as a purveyor of false promises, not a nationally-renowned research base. How can the University let this happen when it has just raised $2 billion and expressed its dedication to the life sciences? The degree of cognitive dissonance is mind-boggling. I sincerely hope Duke is not letting BAA suffer because it yields no technological applications or IPOs. But given the facts, it is all too easy to conclude that the administrators' "dedication" to the life sciences is merely a single-minded focus on money-making fields like pharmacogenomics. Surely people who have risen so high in academia know that the true value of scientific research is not preceded by dollar signs. Then again, this is a school that apparently would rather have a cross-campus monorail than a top academic department.

These are tough times for biological anthropology. In the past year alone, its brightest have found Sahelanthropus tchadensis, the first ancestor of humankind; they have discovered culture in our more primitive primate cousins; they have contributed enormously to our understanding of ourselves as a species. None of it has made any difference. The field is still in danger - and its woes are not limited to Duke. At Columbia, where I am now pursuing a master's degree, the cultural anthropologists have staged an insurrection against the biological wing, with the deans' blessing. They have chased out every bio-anthro professor save one, a brilliant man responsible for much of what we know about the evolution of the human brain. Nearing retirement age, he can barely teach enough courses to give his students viable degrees. Replace the cultural anthropologists with administrators, and it is a scenario frighteningly similar to what could happen at Duke. Is this what we want?

Years ago, when I was a Chronicle staffer, one of our letter writers got angry at an administrative decision and wrote that Duke was getting "not one red cent" from her in alumni donations until the problem was solved. I found it amusing at the time (what a silly, overheated little girl!), but now I understand. If I ever have, say, a spare $2 billion - or even $200,000 - I'll funnel it into biological anthropology. If Duke doesn't have a department, it won't get one red cent. I'm not saying Duke's top priority should be raking in alumni donations. Its top priority should be its right to be called a research university. As of now, though, it stands to lose both.

Mary Carmichael, Trinity '01, a former BAA major, is a science reporter at Newsweek and a former executive editor and TowerView editor for The Chronicle.