Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) dedicated himself to research, invention, and sharing knowledge for the “benefit of mankind in general.” Franklin believed that all people could and should engage with science, and that science could transform society for the better. For these reasons, Franklin could be called America’s first citizen scientist.

Citizen, or community, science is a modern term that broadly refers to public participation in scientific research. It is science as practiced by nonprofessional scientists in collaboration with professional research teams. Free communication of results is fundamental to citizen science projects. People of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds can join in by volunteering their time to record and share local observations on topics of global importance. Citizen scientists believe that evidence-based science can be used to transform society for the better. In many ways, Benjamin Franklin expressed the values of a citizen scientist 200 years before the term came into use. 

Franklin was committed to being useful to others and freely shared his inventions and ideas. As a citizen scientist, he addressed some of society’s most pressing issues, from maritime navigation and counterfeit currency, to smallpox epidemics and destructive electrical storms. Franklin approached scientific challenges by drawing on both his theoretical knowledge and practical experiences. He turned any available space into a laboratory, including homes, workshops, and ships. Controlled experimentation and careful observation characterized Franklin’s scientific practice. Franklin also created institutions that used science to benefit and educate others. However, he participated in a system of knowledge production that often reinforced and produced inequality. 

In the 18th century, London was the scientific center of the British Empire. Colonists who desired to be taken seriously as scientists sought the recognition of London’s elite individuals and institutions. They sent letters describing their environment along with specimens—objects of scientific interest such as plants and animals—to contacts in England. Colonists imported books and scientific instruments to support their investigations. However, Europeans valued colonial North America more for its natural resources than the talents of the people who lived there.

Franklin participated in this transatlantic exchange of knowledge with great success. From Philadelphia, he built a network with connections on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. As the first American-born colonist to receive international praise for his research, Franklin ensured recognition for American science. 

His working-class origins and self-education distinguished Franklin from other elite scientists, known in the 18th century as natural philosophers. Franklin’s citizen science began in the home, where diverse people produced and exchanged useful knowledge. Household and trade sciences, often dismissed as the labor of women and tradespeople, shaped Franklin’s scientific practice even after he entered elite circles. His parents operated a soap- and candle-making business from their Boston residence. His mother-in-law, Sarah White Read, made medicines in their Philadelphia home where he and Deborah ran a press. All of these sciences turned his homes into laboratories and inspired his inventions. Franklin also used his Philadelphia, London, and Paris residences as scientific gathering places. The members of the Franklin households, including enslaved people, enabled his success. Because of his background, he recognized that science could take many forms and that all people could produce useful knowledge. 

In his youth, Franklin sought patrons to support his early scientific work. Patrons enabled scientists to conduct and publish their research by providing money, supplies, and access to scientific networks. Institutions such as the Royal Society of London and the French Royal Academy of Sciences were patrons for the advancement of knowledge. Wealthy supporters acted for personal glory, as they would be celebrated in resulting publications. This system favored educated, white men who could work within business and political networks to meet sponsors. Those who lacked connections due to their social status, including most women, men of the working classes, enslaved people, and Indigenous peoples, produced useful knowledge without support or recognition. Remembered as a singular genius, Franklin worked closely with family, friends, and enslaved members of his household. Operating within a society that privileged knowledge produced by elite white men, many of Franklin’s collaborators and sources went uncredited. 

Nevertheless, Franklin remained committed to advancing useful knowledge for “the Benefit of Mankind in General” even as his responsibilities as a public servant demanded more of his time. He believed that “there is no Rank in Natural Knowledge of equal Dignity and Importance with that of being . . . a good Neighbour or Friend, a good Subject or Citizen.” Franklin applied his privileged position to civic improvement by founding or patronizing institutions that promoted research and education, empowering the next generation of American citizen scientists. Many of these institutions still exist today, including the American Philosophical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Hospital, and the University of Pennsylvania. Yet in his lifetime, the vast majority of people who benefited were elite, white men. When Franklin died, his work as a citizen scientist had made him the most recognizable American in the world. He had risen above his working-class origins and counted presidents and kings among his friends.

Franklin’s spirit of inquiry and legacy of civic improvement continue at the APS today. The APS remains committed to the belief that the pursuit of useful knowledge is inherently in the public interest and therefore essential to society. The APS continues to elect distinguished scientists, humanists, and leaders in civic and cultural affairs to Membership, and engages Members through annual Meetings. APS grants, fellowships, lectures, publications, and prizes encourage groundbreaking research, discovery, and public engagement.

Written by Dr. Janine Boldt, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow, with the assistance of Mike Madeja, Head of Education Programs

The American Philosophical Society’s 2020 Patrick Suppes Prize for Experimental or Mathematical Psychology was awarded to Elizabeth Loftus in recognition of her demonstrations that memories are generally altered, false memories can be implanted, and the changes in law and therapy this knowledge has caused. 

The presentation of the prize took place at the Society's virtual April 2021 Meeting.  In the video of the award ceremony above, APS president Linda Greenhouse introduces the prize and the chair of the prize selection committee, Richard Shiffrin, presents the prize to her.  In her acceptance speech Dr. Loftus shares her experience of the tremendous backlash against her findings, including death threats, as well as the satisfaction when the benefits of her findings helped prove the innocence of people imprisoned due to false memories.

Of all the world's cognitive scientists, Elizabeth Loftus has carried out research that has had the strongest and most important impact upon society. Beth received her Ph.D. from Stanford, took faculty positions at the New School in New York and the University of Washington and then moved to the University of California at Irvine, where she is now Distinguished Professor, and member of Psychological Science, Criminology Law and Society, Cognitive Science, and the School of Law. She studies human memory. Her experiments reveal how memories can be changed by things that we experience, that we rehearse after the fact, and that we are told. She is the world's authority on the field known as false memory. She has shown how suggestions after a memory has formed can alter that memory, research that has produced growing changes in the way that police interrogations are carried out, so that initially uncertain memories are not transformed into certain ones. Even more startling, she has shown how strong, vivid and compelling memories can be formed for personal experiences that never happened. For example, someone can form a vivid and certain memory of being saved from drowning when young, although no such event ever occurred. This research led to a revolution in the way certain psychiatrists have dealt with their patients; these therapists, convinced that adult problems were often the result of childhood sexual abuse, helped their patients form vivid memories of such abuse by their parents, abuse that never took place, leading to destructive family interactions, lawsuits against innocent parents, and worse.  Dr. Loftus and her research has almost single handedly stopped these practices. 

In related research Dr. Loftus demonstrated the uncertainties and ambiguities inherent in many instances of eyewitness testimony, leading to gradual change and reform in the fundamental bases of our legal system.  It is especially appropriate for Elizabeth Loftus to receive this Prize because Pat Suppes was Dr. Loftus' thesis advisor.  If Pat were living today he would be ecstatic to see Elizabeth receive this award.

The Patrick Suppes Prize honors accomplishments in three deeply significant scholarly fields, with the prize rotating each year between philosophy of science, psychology or neuroscience, and history of science. The Patrick Suppes Prize in Psychology or Neuroscience is awarded for a body of outstanding work which consists of at least three articles published within the preceding six years.  The work in psychology is to be either in mathematical or experimental psychology.

The committee members were Richard M. Shiffrin, Distinguished Professor, Luther Dana Waterman Professor, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Indiana University; Susan T. Fiske, Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology, Professor of Public Affairs, Princeton University; John G. Hildebrand, Regents Professor of Neuroscience, University of Arizona; Jay McClelland, Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Chair, Department of Psychology, Director, Center for Mind, Brain and Computation, Stanford University; and Elissa Newport, Director, Center for Brain Plasticity and Recovery, Professor of Neurology, Georgetown University.

Autumn General Meeting
Owen M. Fiss

The recipient of the 2020 Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence is Owen M. Fiss, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law and Professorial Lecturer in Law at Yale University.  The citation reads: “In recognition of his lifetime of contributions to American law and jurisprudence, most especially his inspirational interpretation of legal equality in terms of overcoming and resisting social stratification; his path-breaking explication of how courts might realize constitutional values in the real world of government institutions; his global writings illuminating human rights as ideals rooted in both universal principles and national self-determination; his mentorship of generations of legal scholars, both in the United States and abroad; and his abiding faith in the power of law to light our way toward a just future.”

In the course of his long, productive, and influential career, Owen Fiss has been a deep student of civil procedure, teaching the American legal system about judicial remedies addressing systemic wrongs as well as the essentials of public law adjudication. He led the way in proposing revolutionary new understandings of the theory and application of antidiscrimination law, advocating that it become an instrument for the removal of structural conditions of inequality. He has been a profound student of the war on terror, illuminating how it might be brought to heel by the values of the rule of law. He has been a force for legal reform throughout Latin America. He has proposed an influential reinterpretation of the First Amendment that emphasizes the social functions of speech in a democracy. He has authored important reinterpretations of American constitutional history. 

Established in 1888, the Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence is awarded in recognition of outstanding lifetime contributions to the field of jurisprudence and important publications which illustrate that accomplishment.  In the 125 years since its inception, the Society has bestowed the prize only 26 times.

The selection committee was Linda Greenhouse, (chair), President of the American Philosophical Society and Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence, Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School; Jane C. Ginsburg, Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law, Columbia Law School; Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor, Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, Harvard Law School; Robert C. Post, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School; Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Law School; and David S.Tatel, United States Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The 2020 Karl Spencer Lashley Award is awarded jointly to Winrich Freiwald and Doris Tsao “in recognition of their ground-breaking discoveries of primate cortical areas that selectively encode visual information about faces, the computational principles underlying face encoding in these areas, and the implications of these discoveries for social cognition.”

In a technical tour de force, Winrich Freiwald and Doris Tsao combined functional magnetic resonance imaging, electrophysiological recording, and anatomical tracing to define and characterize a set of cortical ‘patches’ in the primate visual cortex that selectively processes information about the faces of conspecific animals.  Along a posterior-to-anterior gradient in the cortex, the face patches shift from a general selectivity for faces to selectivity for the faces of specific individuals irrespective of the angle from which they are viewed.  In subsequent independent work, Freiwald explored the significance of this pathway for social cognition, and Tsao performed causal experiments using electrical microstimulation to show that the face patches exert a major influence on behavioral face perception.  The physiological sophistication, exquisite anatomical specificity, and computational coherence of this pathway provide some of the most elegant results in modern behavioral neuroscience.  

Winrich Freiwald is Professor of Neurosciences and Behavior at the Rockefeller University.  Doris Tsao is Professor of Biology, T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience Leadership Chair, Investigator for Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Director of the T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience at Caltech.

The Karl Spencer Lashley Award was established in 1957 by a gift from Dr. Lashley, a member of the Society and a distinguished neuroscientist and neuropsychologist.  His entire scientific life was spent in the study of behavior and its neural basis.  Dr. Lashley’s famous experiments on the brain mechanisms of learning, memory and intelligence helped inaugurate the modern era of integrative neuroscience, and the Lashley Award recognizes innovative work that continues exploration in the field.

The members of the selection committee are William T. Newsome III (chair), Harman Family Provostial Professor, Vincent V. C. Woo Director of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, Professor of Neurobiology and, by courtesy, of Psychology, Stanford University; John E. Dowling, Gordon and Llura Gund Research Professor of Neurosciences Emeritus, Harvard University; Catherine Dulac, Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Lee and Ezpeleta Professor of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, and Investigator for Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Ann M. Graybiel, Institute Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; John G. Hildebrand, Regents Professor of Neuroscience, University of Arizona; Eric Knudsen, Sewell Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus, Stanford University School of Medicine; Edvard Moser, Professor of Neuroscience, Director, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; and Larry R. Squire, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology, University of California, San Diego, Research Career Scientist, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego.

The selected recipient for the 2020 Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History is Francesca Trivellato, Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, for her book The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society, Princeton University Press, 2019.

This remarkable book ‘examines key episodes in the West’s millennium-long struggle to delineate the place that finance ought to occupy in the social and political order’.   It centers, as its title says, on the idea of credit, a word that suggests and requires faith but also makes people worry about whom to trust.  This ambivalence is at the center of Professor Trivellato’s work, where ‘the disruptive character of credit’ and ‘the hidden dangers of credit markets’ have to be negotiated alongside their obvious commercial merits.  How were ‘far-flung merchants’ in the 17th century to operate if they could not rely the scraps of paper known as bills of exchange?  How were they to modernize?  

The book begins with a 2002 quotation from Warren Buffett, and moves back to a close study of crucial earlier documents before returning to the present day.  It tells a story of financial facts but also of unshakable fantasies, all of them involving a supposed special relation between Jews and money.  This is the ‘legend’ that Professor Trivellato keeps invoking  -  the baseless but endlessly repeated notion that medieval Jews invented bills of exchange and marine insurance.  The legend is understood either as a tribute to their ingenuity or (more frequently) a sign of how manipulative they are.  The ‘anxieties created by Jews’ potential invisibility in the marketplace’, we learn, ‘could be mapped onto the increasing abstraction of the paper economy’, allowing the legend to ‘bring to the fore the misgivings that went hand in hand with the rise of capitalism and formal equality as pillars of European modernity’. 

They could be so mapped, and they were, since this legend ‘constituted conventional wisdom from the 1650s to the 1910s’.   The Jews’ ‘potential invisibility’ was for many people a matter of their ‘perceived ubiquity’, so the Jews could take the blame for ‘the perils lurking behind ever more complex financial markets’.  The Promise and Peril of Credit makes a very strong case for studying historical fantasies alongside historical facts.   ‘Tales that once held sway over people’s imagination’, Professor Trivellato writes, ‘disclose forgotten cultural models’, and ‘origin stories continue to fascinate historians, anthropologists, and literary critics, less for the veracity of their content than for what they tell us about shared beliefs of societies different from  ours’.   This claim is all the more powerful, we may think, when the content has no veracity, and the society in question is perhaps not as different from ours as we would like to think.

The Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History is awarded annually to the author whose book exhibits distinguished work in American or European cultural history.  Established by a former student of Jacques Barzun, the prize honors this historian and cultural critic who was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1984.   

The selection committee consisted of Michael Wood (chair), Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Princeton University; David Hollinger, Preston Hotchkis Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley; and Robert B. Pippin, Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor, Committee on Social Thought, Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago.

Keith Marshall Jones III

The 2019 recipient of the Society’s John Frederick Lewis Award is Keith Marshall Jones III in recognition of his book John Laurance: The Immigrant Founding Father America Never Knew (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 108, Part 2).

This is the first substantial study of a little known immigrant to the New World who collaborated with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the creation of the American nation. Born in 1750 in Cornwall, he forged a legal career in New York. His association with Hamilton has obscured his contributions to the War for Independence and its Federalist aftermath.  He helped Hamilton in the passage of the treasury secretary’s transformative financial agenda and, together with Madison, converted the paper Constitution into the machinery of government in the vastly underappreciated First Federal Congress. This biography of John Laurance, who survived until 1810, restores important missing pieces to our nation’s founding narrative and exposes the Cornish émigré’s remarkable ascent into Federalist America’s governing inner circle. 

Keith Marshall Jones III is an independent scholar who has written several articles and books on the American Revolution. He is a direct descendant of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. Publications include Congress As My Government (2008), the “definitive account of Marshall’s military service in the War for Independence”; Framers Against the Crown (2002, 2014); and The Farms of Farmingville (2001). His article in 2017 on “John Laurance and the Role of Military Justice at Valley Forge” (Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography) re-introduced the forgotten immigrant New York lawyer to scholars. 

In 1935 the Society established the John Frederick Lewis Award with funds donated by his widow.  The award recognizes the best book or monograph published by the Society in a given year.  Members of the selection committee were Glen W. Bowersock (chair), Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced Study; Julia Haig Gaisser, Professor Emeritus of Latin, Eugenia Chase Guild Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Bryn Mawr College; and Noel M. Swerdlow, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics and of History, University of Chicago.

Extended answers from Rose Miron (RM) and Heather Bruegl (HB), panelists from “Relationships, Reciprocity, and Responsibilities: Indigenous Studies in Archives and Beyond,” panel 5: Community-Based Archival Initiatives (Click here to watch)

Question: Has the Stockbridge Munsee historical society had other objects (as opposed to papers) repatriated in the past? I'm kind of (pleasantly) surprised that the Oshkosh museum reacted well, and wonder if the reactions to repatriation requests have changed over time? (Kai Pyle)
RM: Yes, the Arvid E. Miller Library-Museum has had other objects repatriated in the past. The historic Bible and Communion set that was repatriated from the Mission House Museum in Stockbridge, MA is an especially interesting case for many reasons. While the Communion set was returned through a formal NAGPRA request in 2006, the two volume Bible set was returned in 1991. The agreement for return was made just six months before NAGPRA was passed and the actual return happened outside of a formal NAGPRA request in March 1991. The Trustees of Reservations, who manage the Mission House Museum, were quite resistant to this repatriation for a long time however. The tribe began asking for the Bible and Communion set to be returned in 1975. The story of that return is outlined in a 2018 article I published in the journal Native American and Indigenous Studies, Volume 5, Issue 2. I believe the Library-Museum has also successfully recovered at least one wampum belt, but Heather will know more about other repatriations than I do. 
HB: The Library/Museum has been able to successfully repatriate several items, those mentioned above as in the Bible and communion set as well as a partial wampum belt in addition to sacred objects as well.  We are extremely excited that the repatriation of the powder horn is going so well as this will help set a precedent for us and hopefully allow us to be successful in other objects that we currently have our eye on.
 
Question: What are the panelists’ reasons for or what do they see as benefits to working on archives-related topics outside of the formal archives world, for example, pursuing a PhD in anthropology versus in library and information studies? (Anonymous) 
RM: While I can't speak for Anthropology (my PhD is in American Studies and I am a historian) I guess I came to this topic a bit backwards--I didn't think I would be writing about archives when I started working with the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation in 2011. But, I quickly realized that I was interested in the process of how historical narratives are produced, and that archives are key to that process. So, coming at my research from a historical lens not only allows me to really interrogate the ways that tribal archives specifically intervene in the production of history, but also allows me to think about how the growth of tribal archives fits within the longer trajectory of Native activism in the second half of the 20th century. 
HB: I think being able to pursue a degree in archives can be extremely helpful when you are working on history related projects.  While I don’t have a PhD, both my BA and MA have an emphasis on history and I am a historian.  Being able to work with archives and learning how they work can be extremely beneficial when you are working in the history field.
 
Question: Are there any positive outcomes of archives’ ethnographic material returned to tribes and away from universities? (Danelle Gutierrez)
RM: I think there is tremendous potential for positive outcomes. Ethnographic material does often need to be carefully critiqued and interrogated because of the fact that so much of it was created within an exploitative research model. However, Native people are the best experts on how to do that. They have the capability to interrogate these items and recognize how colonialism likely impacted the conclusions made by the author, while also taking knowledge that does resonate with them and using it in support of language and cultural revitalization. In other words, I do believe these materials can be read "along the grain" as Ann Stoler puts it, but Native researchers are best equipped to do that work because of the knowledge they hold. Some tribal nations may not want those materials repatriated or may already have copies, but I think it is worth having conversations about where that knowledge belongs. 
 
Question: What are your hopes with regard to establishing a precedent with the powderhorn repatriation? any changes in methodology or process? (Stephen Curley)
HB: I think that our main hope, other than having the object finally home, is that it helps set a precedent for our tribal nation to use when trying to bring other objects home.  Under NAGPRA, Cultural Patrimony is extremely hard to navigate.  The burden of proof is put on the tribal nation as opposed to the holding facility.  We have to show why an item is important to us and we are at the mercy of the holding facility telling us no, we are wrong.  So it is the holding facility who dictates to us how our history is told.  While NAGPRA does help, it is still the holding facility that can dictate whether or not our oral histories meet their criteria.   The success with the Oshkosh Public Museum is a huge step because it was a case argued under cultural patrimony and the museum saw and heard us and agreed.  This can be extremely beneficial for future repatriations using cultural patrimony.

Extended answers from Johannah Bird (JB), panelist from “Relationships, Reciprocity, and Responsibilities: Indigenous Studies in Archives and Beyond,” panel 3: Indigenous Researchers in Non-Native Archives (Click here to watch)

Question: How can research programs support specific emotional needs of researchers experiencing or re-experiencing trauma through archival work? (Bimadoshka Pucan)
JB: Thank you for this question. I think developing awareness around how histories of colonialism and racism can (and do) come to bear on researchers’ experiences both in and outside archives is important. This requires knowledge—of these histories and of the range of ways researchers can be impacted by the materials they work with. As a practical example, it helps if a researcher doesn’t have to educate the staff and archivists who are working with them about, say, Indigenous histories while the researchers are also trying to do their own work in the archives. However, what a research program—and the folks who administer it—is able to do depends on the program itself. From my own experience, my archival research processes have always benefited from being in contact with other scholars and thinkers, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, who are thinking about similar questions and issues and with whom (if not in person, then through their work) I can process my own experiences. So, developing ways for researchers to have that support from knowledgeable, experienced peers or colleagues is important. Finally, what is being done within archives to mitigate the possibilities of re-traumatization? What conditions of support, care, and understanding surround troubling materials?

Question: Can you talk more about your experiences at the Six Nations Archives as a model for what non-Native archives can do to better care for Indigenous researchers? (Anonymous)
JB: My relationship with the Deyohahá:ge: The Indigenous Knowledge Centre is facilitated by my participation in the Two Row Research Partnership, a group of researchers and thinkers committed to thinking about research methodologies arising from the Two Row Wampum. As a group of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous thinkers, we are hosted by Deyohahá:ge: and also work to support the Knowledge Centre in practical ways. I have not conducted extensive research in the collections at Deyohahá:ge:, but I have always experienced hospitality that I do not often experience in state archives. Deyohahá:ge: is focused on Haudenosaunee collections, reflecting its place in Six Nations of the Grand River, but as a non-local Anishinabee, I felt welcomed and was provided with materials to help me begin thinking with folks in Six Nations in reference to their stories, history, and epistemologies. There are also so many things assumed or taken for granted at a place like Deyohahá:ge:--the responsibility to serve the local community, the necessity of repatriation, centering Indigenous knowledge and experience in research, understanding around the stakes of research priorities for Indigenous researchers, to name a few. 

Question: What can archives do to improve care for researchers? (Anonymous)
JB: First and foremost, learn about colonial histories and the ways archives and archival processes have been and are implicated in these histories (e.g., reifying notion of Indigenous people as always objects of study). 

Question: Johannah, thank you for sharing your feelings you felt working with archives. I, too, work with our Peoples ethnographic material and was an ethnographic manuscript transcriber so the emotions that humans can feel I went through very one of them. Do you think some of the materials should be kept private regarding burials and ceremonies?  The informants were interviewed by their family members otherwise they wouldn't have shared any of this info with the anthropologists of UC Berkeley California. (Danelle Gutierrez)
JB: I am unfamiliar with the question-asker’s context, but I do see a place for some archives remaining or becoming private. However, I think it is difficult to make general rules about this applied to all contexts. Rather, the communities affected by the materials should be able to impact this kind of decision.