I want you to picture a scientific conference.
Just, you know, close your eyes and imagine it.
You're probably seeing, what, a hotel ballroom,
maybe some lukewarm coffee and styrofoam cups.
Yeah, and some guy in a tweed jacket pointing
at a PowerPoint slide full of, like, dirt samples.
Exactly. It is usually the least dramatic setting
on planet Earth. Usually. Until you take that
boring conference and throw a geopolitical grenade
right into the middle of it. Right. Imagine that
same conference becomes so controversial that
it causes a global schism in the entire field
of study. The whole field splits in two. It gets
expelled, literally kicked out by its own parent
organization. It becomes a battleground for international
politics involving protests, bans, and these
secret high -stakes meetings in Paris. It sounds
like the plot of a spy novel, doesn't it? But
we are, and this is the wild part, we are actually
talking about archaeology. We are. Today we are
digging into a book that documents one of the
biggest, messiest fights in the history of academia.
A really big one. It is titled Academic Freedom
and Apartheid, the Story of the World Archaeological
Congress. It was written by Peter Ukko and published
way back in 1987. And we should clarify right
away, this is not your standard textbook about,
you know, digging up bones or carbon dating.
This is a primary source document. It's effectively
a manifesto in a diary about a massive rupture
that happened in 1986. And it all centers on
a question that I think is, well, it's even more
relevant now than it was 40 years ago. Definitely.
Is science ever truly neutral? Or does this idea
of academic freedom sometimes provide, I guess,
a hiding place for ignoring injustice? That is
the mission for this deep dive. We are going
to explore how a debate over academic freedom
versus human rights just tore the archaeological
world apart all during the height of the anti
-apartheid movement. And we're seeing it through
the eyes of the man who was right in the center
of the storm, Peter Ukko. So to understand the
storm, you really have to understand the landscape
before it all blew up. Right. Yuko spends the
first part of the book just setting the stage.
The year is leading up to 1986. The governing
body for all of this is an organization called
the IUPPS. Which is a bit of a mouthful. Let's
break that down. It is. It stands for the International
Union for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences.
It sounds incredibly dusty. It was. I mean, think
of the IUPPS as the old guard. It's this very
established, very traditional international body.
They hold a major congress every few years. And
in 1986, it was Britain's turn to host. And this
is where Peter Ukko enters the picture. He's
a professor at Southampton University in the
UK, and he gets hired as the national secretary.
So basically, he's the guy in charge of organizing
this whole massive event. Yeah. But reading the
intro in chapter one, it is immediately obvious
that Ukko isn't interested in just, you know,
keeping the seat warm. Not at all. Ukko is a
disruptor by nature. He opens the book with a
very sharp critique of his own field. He argues
that the IUPPS and archaeology in general was
just far too Eurocentric. An exclusive club.
Exactly. He felt it ignored viewpoints from what
he calls the third and fourth world. He didn't
just want a meeting. He wanted a global exchange.
But before we even get to the politics, I love
that Uco describes the absolute logistical nightmare
of just trying to pull this off. Oh, it's great.
Chapter one is titled How Not to Finance a Congress.
It is a surprisingly honest look at the the sausage
making of academia. We tend to think of these
international bodies as these well -oiled machines.
But he describes the fundraising as shambolic.
Shambolic is such a fantastic British word for
total disaster. It fits perfectly here. He details
the struggle to get underwriting, the disorganized
committees, just a lack of support. But his goal
wasn't just to pay the bills. Oh, he was trying
to change who got to sit at the table. He wanted
indigenous people. people from developing nations,
the people whose history was actually being studied,
to be the ones presenting the papers. And that's
the key. So you have this ambitious, slightly
chaotic organizer, UCO, who wants this diverse
global Congress, but then reality crashes in.
This is the mid -1980s. And the global movement
against apartheid in South Africa is reaching
a boiling point. This is where the rubber meets
the road. We are in chapters two and three now.
The political climate in 1985 was incredibly
intense. There was this global push to isolate
South Africa culturally, economically, academically.
And Uko is based in Southampton. In chapter three,
he details the pressure he was under locally.
I mean, this wasn't just vague international
vibes. No, this was real. We are talking about
the Southampton City Council, the student unions,
the local community. They were all telling him,
if you let South African scientists come here,
we are shutting you down. They threatened to
pull funding. They threatened picketing. They
threatened to make the conference literally unholdable.
And this is the dilemma. The World Archaeological
Congress, or WAC, had a binary choice. Do they
allow South African scientists to attend or do
they ban them? And they chose the ban. They decided
to ban South African and Namibian participation.
And just to be clear for the listener, Namibia
was under South African occupation at the time.
Right. So they were sort of lumped together.
Exactly. Now, you might think, OK, makes sense.
Down with apartheid. But this decision is the
flashpoint. It is. You have to understand the
IUPPS that parent body operates on a core principle
of free academic exchange. Their rules and the
rules of almost all international scientific
bodies at the time said that everyone should
be welcome. Regardless of their country's politics
or laws. Exactly. So on one side, you have the
IUPPS saying science has no borders. We don't
care about your passport. We care about your
data. And on the other side, you have the WAC,
UCO's group, saying we cannot host representatives
of a racist apartheid regime. It's a clash of
moral frameworks. And UCO documents how everything
just starts to unravel. People who initially
said they'd come started pulling out. The press
got involved. It wasn't just an administrative
decision anymore. It was a line in the sand.
And the parent body. The IUPPS was furious. Which
leads us to the showdown. We are looking at chapters
4, 5, and 6 now. The narrative moved to Paris
January 17, 1986. The meeting of the IUPPS International
Executive Committee. This was the trial. Ukko
describes trying to get third and fourth world
representatives there to plead their case to
explain that if the South Africans came, no one
else would. The conference would be boycotted
by the rest of the world. But the old guard wasn't
hearing it. No. The IAPPS executive committee
officially expelled the WAC. They disowned the
Congress entirely for banning the South Africans.
And they didn't just disown them. No, they decided
to hold an alternative official Congress in Mainz,
Germany instead. They basically said, you are
no longer the real conference. We are taking
our ball and going to Germany. That is a massive
rejection. And Ukko does not pull any punches
about how he felt. that the title of chapter
five is just it's western european manipulation
and presidential timidity you can feel the venom
in that title can't you uco viewed the decision
not as a defense of freedom but as a desperate
attempt to protect the status quo to keep the
club exclusive he felt they were hiding behind
the rules to avoid taking a moral stand That's
his whole argument. So the WAC is kicked out.
They have no parent organization. Most people
would probably just cancel the event at that
point. I mean, the funding was already precarious.
Exactly. But then we get to Chapter 6, which
Ukko titles, Cancel and or be damned. Which captures
the spirit perfectly. It does. On February 8th,
1986, the WAC executive committee meets. And
instead of folding, most of the members resign
from the IUPPS connection. They decide to stick
with UCO and the boycott. They go rogue. It's
practically a mutiny. It is. They chose to forge
ahead as an independent entity. This is the split
that defined the field for years. They were betting
that the moral imperative of opposing apartheid
was more important than the official seal of
approval from the IUPPS. And the amazing thing
is they pulled it off. We get to chapters 8 and
9, and Uco reveals that the Congress actually
took place September 1986 in Southampton. Against
all odds. And based on Uco's narrative in the
photos in the book, the atmosphere was completely
different from a standard academic conference.
Because the IUPPS had pulled out, a lot of the
traditional Western European scholars didn't
come. But scholars from Africa, Asia, and South
America did. The people Uco wanted there in the
first place. There's this one specific photo
mentioned in the book that I think really paints
the picture. It's described by Jane Hubert. I
know the one you mean. It shows a Sani child
that's an indigenous person from northern Scandinavia
playing with a Turkish puzzle ring. And where
is this child sitting? On the lap of a Kichwa
Indian from Ecuador. That image is the thesis
statement of the whole event. It symbolizes that
global mixing Ukko was fighting for. You have
indigenous peoples from opposite ends of the
earth connecting. Ukko contrasts this sharply
with the tweed jacket Eurocentric past. So it
wasn't just professors reading papers. It was
a meeting of cultures. And according to the book,
the participants loved it. The verdict was apparently
overwhelming enthusiasm for this new inclusive
format. But, and we have to play devil's advocate
here, what was the intellectual cost? Or rather,
what was the philosophical argument that justified
the ban? Because banning scientists because of
where they live is a very slippery slope. Right.
And in Chapter 10, The Aftermath, Ukko really
lays out his philosophy. He has this line that
stood out to me. He says, Academics cannot hide
behind the shaky edifice of their own academic
freedom. Shaky edifice. That's a strong critique.
Uco's argument is that until apartheid ends,
priorities have to shift. He says academics must
prioritize freedom itself over academic freedom.
So essentially, you can't have true academic
freedom if people aren't free in the real world
first. That's it. If the black population of
South Africa can't vote or travel freely, then
a white South African archaeologist claiming
academic freedom is just benefiting from oppression.
He's saying that clinging to the idea of academic
freedom while ignoring state sponsored racism
is a form of complicity. Precisely. And he tried
to institutionalize this. He includes appendices
in the book letters to UNESCO, things like that,
showing that he wanted to make this the new normal
for international science. So Ukko clearly sees
himself as a pioneer here. But this brings us
to the reception of the book, because not everyone
agreed with his version of events or his methods.
When the book came out, the reviews were, well,
mixed is an understatement. Oh, it was incredibly
polarizing. And looking at the reception section
of our source material, you see that people were
angry for very different reasons. Let's start
with Sandra Baudler. She had a bone to pick with
the title itself. She did. She called it a false
title. She picked up academic freedom and apartheid
expecting this deep philosophical debate, you
know, about the nature of freedom under oppressive
regimes. And instead? Instead, she felt she got
a bureaucratic account of organizing her conference
minutes, funding issues, logistics. She basically
said, this isn't philosophy. This is the diary
of a meeting planner. So she wanted Plato and
she got a spreadsheet. Essentially. But then
you have J. Desmond Clark. He was much more critical
of Ukko personally. He described the book as
an ego trip. An ego trip. Yes. Clark felt Ukko
was portraying himself as the leader of a humanitarian
crusade. He thought Ukko was centering himself
too much, acting like the savior of the discipline.
He basically accused Ukko of having a messiah
complex. But there were also substantive political
critiques, right? It wasn't just about Ukko's
personality. Correct. And this is where the debate
gets really interesting. Connor Cruz O 'Brien
wrote a review in Nature, I mean, a major science
journal, arguing that the boycott was simply
ineffective. He claimed that banning individual
academics did absolutely nothing to change the
apartheid regime in South Africa. And that it
just silenced dialogue, that it curtailed free
speech. He worried it set a dangerous precedent.
If you silence researchers because of their government's
actions, where does it stop? Do you ban American
scientists because of US foreign policy? Do you
ban Chinese scientists? Exactly. He saw it as
damaging the universality of science without
actually hurting the South African government.
There was also a really important point about
the Nazi occupation, wasn't there? This feels
like critical context for why the Europeans were
so dead set against the van. It is the most crucial
bit of context and maybe the one Ukko underestimated.
Critics noted that Ukko just seemed to ignore
the European perspective. Many continental European
scholars, French, German, Dutch, they lived through
the Nazi occupation, or at least its immediate
aftermath. For them, Academic freedom wasn't
a buzzword. No, it meant protection from state
interference. Exactly. They had seen what happens
when politics dictate science. They had seen
Jewish professors purged. They had seen curriculum
rewritten by the state. So they believed science
had to exist outside of government. So when the
WAC started banning people based on politics.
To those European stallers, it looked frighteningly
similar to the political purges they had had
against. They saw the IUPPS as a sanctuary that
UGA was violating. That is a really heavy perspective.
It makes the IUPPS's resistance make a lot more
sense. It wasn't just stubbornness. No, it was
a trauma response to history. It's a clash of
two different moral frameworks. One says science
must stay out of politics to survive. The other
says science is inherently political and we must
choose the side of justice. But surely UCO had
supporters. It wasn't all bad reviews. No, not
at all. Larry J. Zimmerman, for instance, called
the book courageous and candid. He acknowledged
that Uco was biased and Uco himself admits his
bias. But Zimmerman praised him for documenting
the personal struggle. He felt that thinking
archaeologists would see their own ethical struggles
reflected in Uco's story. So he saw it as a necessary
document of a difficult time, even if it was
one sided. Yes. It is less of a balanced history
textbook and more of a manifesto or, you know,
a war diary. It's raw. Which brings us to the
legacy of this whole event. I mean, the book
ends. And we are left with this split. What happened
next? The split eventually healed for the most
part, but the WAC still exists today. It remains
a distinct organization with a focus on indigenous
rights and political engagement. The questions
Zuko raised didn't go away. They fundamentally
changed how archaeology is done. They really
did. You can't just swoop in, dig up stuff and
leave anymore without engaging with the local
people. So if we look at this book, what is the
real takeaway? Is it a manual for how to run
a conference? Or a warning? That's the question.
I think if we synthesize all this, the book is
less of a philosophical treatise, as Bodler complained,
and more of a blow -by -blow account of a specific
political rupture. It's a case study in what
happens when the ivory tower gets smashed by
the real world. It forces us to look at the messy
reality. And it forces you, the listener, to
ask. Does banning individuals to protest their
government's actions actually work? Or does it
just cut off the very people who might be your
allies inside that regime? That is the hard part,
isn't it? By banning all the South Africans,
did they isolate the regime? Or did they abandon
the liberal academics inside South Africa who
are fighting apartheid from within? And we know
there were many anti -apartheid archaeologists
in South Africa who were suddenly cut off from
their global colleagues. That's the dilemma Ukko
leaves us with. He chose his side. He believed
freedom itself was more important than the feelings
or careers of those individual scientists. He
beloved, you cannot do business as usual with
an immoral regime. It really makes you think
about our own time. We deal with boycotts and
cancel culture, though that's a loaded term,
and questions of academic responsibility constantly.
The parallels are striking. The specific conflict
was about apartheid, but the core tension is
timeless. It is. Where does a scientist's responsibility
to their field end and their responsibility to
the world begin? Can you be a good archaeologist
if you ignore the suffering of the living people
on the land you are studying? Uco would say absolutely
not. The old guard would say that your job is
the data, not the politics. And frankly, both
sides have points that are hard to dismiss. And
I think that tension is where we're going to
leave you today. It is a fascinating story of
a conference that became a crusade. Peter Uco's
academic freedom and apartheid might be from
1987, but the fight it documents feels like it
could have happened yesterday on Twitter. Absolutely.
It is a reminder that even in the study of the
ancient past, the present is always right there
demanding to be heard. Well, that's it for this
deep dive. We hope this sparks some thoughts
for you about the intersection of science and
justice. Definitely something to mull over. Thanks
for listening, and we'll catch you on the next
one.