Franz Boas Out of the Ivory Tower

Although the idea that Franz Boas was a public intellectual is widely embraced, there is nothing written that specifically addresses the way he initially got pushed, pulled, or better yet, dragged into the public debates on race, racism, nationalism, and war – the issues for which he used anthropology in public arenas. In this article, I seek to accomplish three tasks: first, to highlight how Franz Boas and his work got pulled into the public arena; second, to assess the impact of Boas’ work as a public intellectual; and finally, to discuss the ways Boas’ writing and research a century ago is being deployed, appropriated, and used in today’s public arenas.