UC Berkeley sit-in for anthropology library delivers partial win

The exhausted anthropologists of UC Berkeley fought back and won — mostly.

It took 85 nights of discomfort as rotating groups of students slept on the hard floor of the George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library they were determined to rescue. It’s what anthropologists do, like field work.

Then, to shout-outs from around the world, on July 15 the activist anthropologists posted their triumphant news on Instagram: “We successfully won.”

Instead of losing their entire treasured athenaeum, the anthropologists will get to keep the space and 40% of its books.

With a bonus, they wrote: “For the first time ever, community members can apply for free UC Berkeley library cards so that they can check out these books.”

The Foster Library houses 50,000 books on subjects that excite the imagination, including pottery from Spanish shipwrecks, tales of Quechua-speaking Inca and what happened in Japan before recorded history.

The library will remain open but “reimagined,” social sciences spokesperson Kenneth Ma said in a statement that referred to the “former anthropology library space.” He credited “students who advocated passionately for the preservation of the library in its current form.”

Ma said it will become a “reading room and space controlled by the Department of Anthropology.”

It was UC Berkeley’s proposal to close three of its 23 libraries to narrow a $75 million budget deficit that galvanized anthropology students in March. The anthropology library, which would have been closed next year, is one of just three such collections in the country. The plan called for spreading its most-used volumes throughout the main library and moving the remaining thousands into a storage facility in Richmond. Students and faculty argued that their scholarship required the material to be available in one, easily accessible place.

Campus officials said Friday that the new agreement allows the anthropology department to keep nearly half of its books — including those related to Native Americans — and sends a portion to the main library. The least-used volumes will go into storage and can be requested within a day.

Although members of the public have always been able to check out books from the main library, up to 50 borrowers a year will now be able to take out books from the anthropology collection, Ma said.

Scholars studying African, Native, Japanese and other cultures had argued that closing the Foster would disproportionately hurt people of color, who are often drawn to anthropology.

More than 170 undergraduates major in anthropology, 40% of whom are underrepresented minorities. Another 70 or so graduate students are focused on the field. The department has 28 professors and more than a dozen emeritus faculty. But outsiders, too, took up the cause.

“I fear that this decision will diminish the value of an Anthropology education at UC Berkeley, a field that disproportionately attracts scholars of color,” Rigel Robinson, a Berkeley City Council member and public policy graduate student, wrote the university in March.

The American Anthropological Association urged Provost Benjamin Hermalin “in the strongest possible terms” to reconsider the decision.

Yet for months, things looked grim.

The Library, as UC Berkeley’s 23 branches are collectively known, faces a $5 million shortfall. Besides closing the anthropology library, the campus’ new library plan calls for eliminating the physics-astronomy and mathematics statistics libraries. Closing all three was intended to save $1.2 million.

As the anthropologists moved peacefully into the library, University Librarian Jeffrey MacKie-Mason talked about the need to make “hard choices.”

But the occupiers persisted.

“Occupation going strong for 7 weeks now!” undergraduate organizer Ian Molloy wrote in a post on June 12 inviting fellow students to a Zoom negotiating session with the administration. The message appeared beside a petition signed by more than 3,000 people urging UC Berkeley not to shutter the library.

Molloy slept in the anthropology library for 40 consecutive days before taking a break.