The ends of anthropology

Abstract At a moment when the US university is in crisis, through a deep exploration of the process of building a new liberal arts university in India, this essay offers a complex but hopeful narrative that allows us to see the liberal arts university, and the humanistic tradition, anew. In doing so, the essay centers the discipline of anthropology, both as object of inquiry and as method, arguing for its vital importance even in an era of program cuts and disciplinary contraction.