Lee D. Baker
· Professor of Cultural AnthropologyDuke University · Business Administration
Active 1982–2025
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About
Lee D. Baker is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology and African & African American Studies at Duke University. He earned his B.S. from Portland State University and his doctorate in anthropology from Temple University. Throughout his career, he has been a resident fellow at prestigious institutions including Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Johns Hopkins's Institute for Global Studies, The University of Ghana-Legon, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Humanities Center. Baker's scholarly work includes several books such as From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 (1998), Life in America: Identity and Everyday Experience (2003), and Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture (2010). Although his primary focus is on the history of anthropology, he has published numerous articles on a wide range of subjects from socio-linguistics to race and democracy. Baker has been recognized for his teaching and scholarship with awards including the Richard K. Lublin Distinguished Teaching Award and the American Anthropological Association's award for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America. From 2008 to 2016, he served as Duke's Dean of Academic Affairs.
Research topics
- Political Science
- Computer Science
- Sociology
- Artificial Intelligence
- Chemistry
- Biochemistry
- Gender studies
- Computational biology
- Biology
- Anthropology
Selected publications
Swinburne Research Bank (Swinburne University of Technology) · 2024-01-01 · 103 citations
reviewOpen accessThis report documents a study by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University to review international experiences with broadband and plans for next generation connectivity. The most prominent initial findings were that U.S. broadband performance in the past decade has declined relative to other countries and is no better than middling. The study expanded the well known observation with regard to penetration per 100 inhabitants, and examined and found the same to be true of p…
The Racist Anti‐Racism of American Anthropology
Transforming Anthropology · 2021 · 97 citations
1st authorCorrespondingIn 1909 Franz Boas conducted a massive study entitled Changes in Bodily Forms of Descendants of Immigrants. In this study, he demonstrated that Eastern and Southern European immigrants to the United States were not racially different from other Europeans because of what he called “the marvelous power of amalgamation.” Boas’s study dealt a blow to scientific racism because he demonstrated the plasticity and instability of racial types. Boas chose to emphasize the enormous gulf between the white a…
W. E. B. Du Bois and American Anthropology
Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022-05-19 · 2 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract W. E. B. Du Bois had a major impact on anthropology because he served as a model and mentor to Franz Boas as he was becoming a public intellectual. Anthropology in the United States changed significantly when Franz Boas (1858–1942) began challenging ideas of racial inferiority and the hierarchy of cultures in the popular press. In first decades of the 20th century the two had developed close relationship. It was Du Bois who invited, pulled, and recruited Franz Boas onto the public stage…
4. The Cult of Franz Boas and His “Conspiracy” to Destroy the White Race
2020-10-09 · 1 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingAmericans Who Have Damaged White Interests1. Lyndon Johnson2. Franklin Roosevelt3. William Clinton4. Abraham Lincoln5. Theodore [Edward] Kennedy6. Earl Warren7. Martin Luther King8. John Kennedy9. Jesse Jackson10. Richard Nixon11. James Carter12. Franz Boas13. D wight Eisenhower14. Eleanor Roosevelt15. Harry Truman16. Woodrow WilsonAmericans Who Have Advanced White Interests1. Jared Taylor2. Patrick Buchanan3. David Duke4. Thomas Jefferson5. Samuel Francis6. Robert E. Lee7. George Washington8. W…
7. Racism, Risk, and the New Color of Dirty Jobs
2019-12-31 · 1 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 30 shared
Philip Quinlan
- 29 shared
Colin A. Purdie
University of Dundee
- 26 shared
Lee B. Jordan
University of Dundee
- 16 shared
Alastair M. Thompson
Baylor College of Medicine
- 16 shared
Susan E. Bray
NHS Tayside
- 13 shared
A Ashfield
Ninewells Hospital
- 12 shared
Alastair M. Thompson
Baylor College of Medicine
- 11 shared
Jean‐Christophe Bourdon
Ninewells Hospital
Awards & honors
- Richard K. Lublin Distinguished Teaching Award
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