SAPIENS to Cease Publication

Dear colleagues,

The Wenner-Gren Foundation has made the difficult decision to halt the creation of new content for SAPIENS Magazine at the end of 2025. It’s a decision we make with deep regret and respect for SAPIENS’ extraordinary impact, and one we are forced to make due to the unprecedented crisis facing our field.

We are so proud of all that SAPIENS has achieved. We want to thank everyone who has shared their support and appreciation for the magazine over the past several months. Since its launch in 2016, SAPIENS has elevated public understanding of anthropology and given hundreds of anthropologists the tools and platforms to reach broader audiences. It has won awards, influenced classrooms and policymakers, and been read by millions.

SAPIENS has embodied the values of public anthropology.

As many of you know, in early 2025, SAPIENS lost its publishing partner, the University of Chicago Press, which provided the vital support that made the magazine possible. Despite this setback, we remained optimistic about continuing SAPIENS’ publication. In the fall of 2024, when the staff unionized, we immediately and voluntarily recognized SAPIENS United. We welcomed the beginnings of the contract negotiations, to lay the groundwork for SAPIENS’ next phase.

Over the past six months, we have worked exhaustively to identify a new partner, approaching more than 25 different presses, universities, and associations. Unfortunately, the search for a new publishing partner has not proven successful. Many of the institutions we’ve approached are reeling from the unprecedented assault on their finances and stability that has been let loose in the U.S. over these past several months.

The Foundation is not able to sustain SAPIENS without a partner. To do so would force a fundamental shift in the Foundation’s funding and staffing model, and a drastic reduction in our ability to provide grants for anthropological research at a time when U.S. federal funding is being curtailed and sister foundations are pulling back. Bringing the SAPIENS team on to the Foundation’s staff is not a viable option. A quarter of our staff would then be tied to the magazine at a time when we need to be flexible to meet the discipline’s urgent needs. We do not support projects, such as SAPIENS, in perpetuity.

We take our responsibility in this moment seriously. The Mellon Foundation is no longer a source of funding for our applicants; neither is the Ford Foundation. The U.S. Fulbright program, National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and other grantors are facing draconian cuts, restrictions or elimination.

Many of our grant applicants have nowhere else to turn.

At our most recent application deadline, the Foundation received a 40 percent increase in proposals for our core programs, and we anticipate that demand will continue to dramatically increase in the months ahead. Without immediate action, we face funding rates of less than 9 percent for Dissertation Fieldwork and Post-PhD Research Grants, and as low as 7 percent for our Hunt and Fejos Postdoctoral Fellowships. We are also facing possible reductions across our entire range of program areas including conferences, workshops, and community engagement. The consequences are stark: a narrower, less diverse, less adventurous field, with brilliant projects left unfunded, scholars left unsupported, and doctoral students stalled in their progress towards their degree.

At the Wenner-Gren Foundation, our motto is “Supporting Anthropology Worldwide.” This challenging moment tests that commitment. As demand for our support soars, we must direct our full resources to sustaining anthropological research and safeguarding the careers of scholars and students in truly precarious positions.

That is why the Foundation has made the painful but necessary decision to conclude new publishing and podcast production for SAPIENS at the end of 2025. The funding previously allocated to SAPIENS will be dedicated to meeting the overwhelming demand for research grants and fellowships, enabling us to support dozens of additional scholars each year.

Where others are pulling back, we will expand. We are heartened that Chip Colwell, the extraordinary founder and editorial director of SAPIENS, will stay on with the Foundation as a full-time Program Director of Public Anthropology where he will lead our efforts to cultivate public scholars, place and promote their content, expand the network of journalists engaged with anthropology, and campaign to grow public support for the discipline in the broadest possible venues.

The threats to our field and the changing media landscape require new approaches. We’re launching a strategic review of how to rethink and enhance the way we communicate about our field to the wider world in this challenging time.

The SAPIENS website will remain live, and its content will remain accessible. We’ll be working with the magazine’s staff and SAPIENS United in the hopes of publishing as many pieces as possible before the end of the calendar year. We are dedicated to smoothing the transition for SAPIENS’ remaining staff in every way we can.

Above all else, I want to extend our deepest thanks to SAPIENS’ authors, readers, and especially the magazine’s team for their vision, care, and commitment. Their work will continue to inspire what comes next.

We know this decision will be met with disappointment. We feel it deeply, too. We hope our community will understand the responsibility we bear: to act with urgency, with clarity, and with purpose to protect the future of anthropology itself.

Yours,

Danilyn Rutherford
President

Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research