Paul Shankman

Paul Shankman is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in Samoa, economic anthropology, political anthropology, theory, and Margaret Mead. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1973 and has been a faculty member at the University of Colorado Boulder since then. He has conducted fieldwork in Samoa since 1966 and has also worked with Pacific Islanders in the United States. For the past few decades, he has been involved in the Mead-Freeman controversy, written a number of articles on it, and authored a book titled The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of and Anthropological Controversy (2009). He has also authored a recent biography of Mead simply titled Margaret Mead (2021). Shankman is featured in a BBC documentary on the Mead-Freeman controversy (Tales from the Jungle: Margaret Mead) available on YouTube and in the recent Sapiens podcast series on Margaret Mead. He has also taught a course on the Holocaust for decades.