Patty Vest:
Welcome to Sagecast, the podcast of Â鶹´«Ã½, from the studios of KSPC. I'm Patty Vest.

Mark Wood:
And I'm Mark Wood. This season on Sagecast, we'll be talking to current and former Pomona faculty about the personal, professional and intellectual journeys that brought them to where they are today.

Patty Vest:
Today, we're delighted to talk to Dru Gladney, professor of anthropology and chair of the anthropology department here at Â鶹´«Ã½.

Mark Wood:
Welcome, Dru. You're a local boy who went away and came home. Tell us a little bit about your formative years.

Dru Gladney:
Well, I went to Damien High School in La Verne, but I was born and raised in Pomona. And I think I'm the only faculty member that was actually born and raised in Pomona. Quite a few were born in Pomona Valley Municipal Hospital, which was the only place you really could be born back then. Most were raised elsewhere. Pomona was a great place to grow up. My junior high was one third black, one third Latino, one third white. I'm proud to say I was elected as the student body president.

Patty Vest:
All right.

Dru Gladney:
It was a three year junior high. And I played football and ran track, walked to school, lived right next door. And it really was a great way to grow up. But we had significant racial and ethnic tensions then. And both my sisters and my older brother went to Pomona High School, where I should've gone, and walked to high school or ridden my bike like they did. But we had a lot of riots then. And as luck would have it, I went to a high school play and was caught up in a race riot and got beaten up, almost to within an inch of my life. And because of that, my Catholic mother packed me off and sent me to Damien High School, which I never regret because the priests there forced me to learn Latin. And by then, I had become a very devout Christian.

Dru Gladney:
I think through that experience, 14 years old, sort of near death experience, just by being a white kid in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it really I think made me think seriously about life and death. And I ended up becoming quite devout as a young man. But it was a kind of alternative Jesus people, born again Christianity. We met in a park in Covina, and my older sisters had gotten involved with it and they took me. And I think going to a Catholic high school, where I often argued with the priests about Christianity, and by then, I'd moved pretty much into Protestant side of Christianity. Sharpened my wit, made me interested, like I said, some of the deeper questions of life. And found the priests there and some of the non clerical faculty to be extremely devout and dedicated to learning. And that kind of set me on my path towards academia and scholarship, and eventually towards China.

Patty Vest:
So you started your studies into religion.

Dru Gladney:
Absolutely.

Patty Vest:
And then you transitioned into anthropology. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Dru Gladney:
Yeah. It's a bit of a journey. I'm the only one in my family to go on in higher education. My dad actually, during World War II, was a pilot. And he flew what is known as the hump from India to China. He flew the transport planes. So I grew up with stories about China. But it was really the religious side that got me interested in I think frontiers. I got involved with this group of very devout Christians who would travel the country in rock bands. A lot of them were sort of recovering, recovered drug addicts and gang members, gang bangers. And I was one of the youngest members of the community, and they sort of took me under their wing.

Dru Gladney:
And I was really fascinated with how religion could transform someone's life, as it had transformed mine. Until then, I'd lived a pretty average, normal life, sports, girls, everything else. But at the age of 14, I hadn't really done anything that had taken me off the edge like a lot of my later class members. So this really turned me around and made me start thinking about scholarship, travel, the stories of the Bible and the life of Jesus, of course, and the life of some of his followers were very inspiring for me.

Dru Gladney:
Having said that, I have very little sort of formal engagement with religion today except through teaching the anthropology of religion at Pomona. It's one of the courses I teach. It's one of the hardest courses I teach because I went on to do my PhD after doing full seminary studies after college, where I fully intended to become some sort of social worker or missionary. I was very interested in social justice. Pomona First Baptist Church, where I ended up, on the corner of Town and Gary in Holt, they had a summer volunteer program. And through that, I washed cars and raised money to go to Hong Kong for a summer, where I taught guitar, English and the Bible in that order.

Dru Gladney:
And at that time, that was the first time I'd ever been on an airplane. And 17 years old, walking the streets of Hong Kong, needless to say was an eye opener. There was still the bamboo curtain. And I was living with a refugee from China, a Baptist minister. And he sort of talked about the evils of communism. And he had literally swam out of China with tying basketballs under his arms. And it really opened my eyes to this larger world, and with the stories of my dad about flying missions over the hump during World War II, I think that sort of made me realize that China was a big and fascinating place, and I wanted to learn more about it.

Dru Gladney:
After that, I went to a small liberal arts college in Santa Barbara, Westmont College, Christian, ecumenical, evangelical, liberal arts school, and majored in religion and philosophy. You really couldn't do much Asian studies then. There was an Oriental philosophy course that I found quite inspiring. But I was very much on the track of going into some kind of Christian service, social work. I was interested in Hong Kong. I had worked in refugee camps for mostly Vietnam War, Vietnamese, Chinese refugees who had been brought to Hong Kong and fled to Hong Kong. And the Baptist church was very involved in helping them get settled in Hong Kong and teaching them English.

Dru Gladney:
And I was inspired about the importance of social work and giving your time and energy. And that really made me think of how I could use my mind and time and background to make a change in the world and to help these people in some ways that I could.

Mark Wood:
So you had a successful career in Hawaii before coming to Pomona. Can you tell us about that and about how you came to be here?

Dru Gladney:
Yeah, well, Hawaii, I was a professor at University of Hawaii in the Asian studies department with a joint appointment anthropology for 15 years, University of Hawaii of Manoa, Honolulu. I by then had been very interested, of course, in Asian studies and China. And they had one of the largest Asian studies programs in the country. But really, it had to do again with the sort of life circumstances. My first job out of post doc at Harvard was at USC. And I was teaching at USC, had bought a house about four blocks from campus. And we were caught up in the middle of the Rodney King riots. And of course, went through that horrendous moment in LA history, right in the center of it.

Dru Gladney:
And if not for my neighbors, mostly Latino neighbors, who we all came together as a neighborhood and kind of protected our own places. Who knows what would've happened? It was terrible, terrible moment for LA. For me personally, it made me realize that you really have to have community. You really have to care for and know your neighbors because when things fall apart, as we're experiencing right now with the coronavirus, it's about trust. It's about community. It's about pulling together when the chips are down. And I experienced that.

Dru Gladney:
As luck would have it, however, on Saturday after the riots had begun on Wednesday, when the city had finally been locked down by the National Guard, and there were half tracks on the street, it was time to move on. And I had a conference in Honolulu. And I get to Honolulu, the dean there says, "Campus is closed at USC. You can't go back. Why don't you stay here for a week or so in my condo on the beach?" And while you're there-"

Mark Wood:
Hard decision.

Dru Gladney:
Yeah, tough decision. And we were able to stay there for a week or so. And the dean got very interested in my work. I had to help him revise a chapter. By then, I'd been working in Central Asia, Western China, on the Silk Road. And through that version, I worked with him on his book. He encouraged me to apply for a job there. I was on my way to Istanbul on a Fulbright Scholarship. And while in Istanbul, I think back then a fax came through. We were just doing email at the start of email, inviting me to come to Honolulu in the middle of winter and interview for this position.

Dru Gladney:
So after the year in Istanbul, I went straight to Honolulu, fully intending to spend only one or two years there and come back to USC. But being that close to Asia and being in the middle of the Pacific, and having learned to surf while I was in high school, there were a lot of attractions, and decided to stay there. I was involved with a research group at the East-West Center in Honolulu, federally funded institution. And really enjoyed my work there. How could I leave Honolulu to come to Pomona back where I grew up? That part wasn't difficult. I always had fond memories of my childhood here. I still have extended family in the area. And I love the climate here, even over Hawaii. I love seasons. I had begun to miss fall and the snow in the winter.

Dru Gladney:
And so I was very intrigued when a letter came through and encouraged me to consider being recruited to Pomona to help run the Pacific Basin Institute at that time. So through the search firm and all that, I came out and really rediscovered this area because when I had left for college to Santa Barbara, I had never really come back. My parents retired to the Central Coast, to San Luis Obispo. And so I rarely revisited this area and had lost touch with a lot of extended family. And I've enjoyed coming back and reconnecting with high school classmates, also really with family. Most of my family are on the West Coast. Unfortunately, both my parents passed away the year I moved here. But my daughter was born here. And it was tough to say goodbye to Hawaii. I have deep ties there, but I really don't miss the fact that you are pretty isolated there, pretty far from anywhere.

Dru Gladney:
It's close to Asia in some ways, but far in terms of cost of living and expenses and travel. And California is becoming much more diverse ethnically, and particularly the Asian community. The Chinese community is growing leaps and bounds, so I don't feel that far from Asia here. And really have enjoyed being closer to what's happening in the US mainland. Hawaii is blissfully far from that, but also quite engaged in the Pacific Theater. And while I was in Hawaii, I took a position with the Asia Pacific Center. It's now the Inouye Center, Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, which is under the US military.

Dru Gladney:
And because of my father's experience, I was very curious and interested in that whole history of US engagement in the Asia Pacific, particularly since World War II, and have continued to do work on that. Right now, I'm working on a large project about the hump flyers in China and Asia, and looking at social memory and how that period is remembered. That greatest generation is almost no longer with us, and so it's kind of a salvage history of that period. I've done some field work in Southwest China and Southeast Asia on this topic. The Flying Tigers and the hump flyers are dearly remembered in China. It kind of represents a high point of US China relations that seems like a very distant memory today, but one I think worth recovering and exploring.

Patty Vest:
Dru, you mentioned the Silk Road a little earlier, and you specialize in the peoples, the cultures, and the politics along the Silk Road. What countries are we talking about when you mention Silk Road? And what got you interested in that area?

Dru Gladney:
Well, as you know, traditional anthropologists tend to study one village, one people, one tribe, one community. That's changed dramatically since I went into anthropology, again, never thinking I was going to do anthropology. But I think that experience in Hong Kong made me realize that I didn't want to spend my life in a library or in a church. I wanted to get out and try to understand what was going on, on the ground. So when I went up grad school at University of Washington, Seattle, I studied Mandarin Chinese, and had an opportunity to go to Peking University in the early '80s when there were very few Westerners there. And while I was at [inaudible 00:16:34], at Beijing University, I got interested in the local community and discovered there was a mosque right off campus.

Dru Gladney:
I'd never known, having had to study China and being very interested in China, I had never learned about Muslims in China. And sought permission to do research on that community and China's policy towards minorities. And at that point, China was very welcoming to host my research. I'm very grateful, eternally grateful, to my Chinese colleagues, who hosted me, who had great risk to themselves because US China relations were just reopening, really, in the early '80s. So I went back to China with full permission to study an urban Muslim minority community in Beijing City.

Dru Gladney:
About almost 200,000 Muslims at that time in Beijing City, something nobody really knew about, numerous mosques that I was allowed to visit. While there, the Muslims said, "Well, if you really want to understand our history, you have to go west, young man." And put me on a bus, and then on a train, and eventually on planes, following the Silk Road and the trade routes where Muslims had come into China, probably their first real diasporic community. And the original Chinese Muslims that I had studied are known as the Hui people, which was a generic term for all Muslims in China. But under the Communist Socialist policy of recognizing certain nationalities, some of which through the religious background have recognition as a separate formally recognized minority nationality, 10 Muslim groups in China. The largest are known as the Hui.

Dru Gladney:
They're very diverse. They speak numerous Chinese languages. They're spread out all over the country. And that kind of gave me a passport to travel, so I went to Tibet. I studied Muslims in Tibet. Hainan Island off the southeast coast of China. Back to Hong Kong numerous times, this large Muslim community there. So during the course of those travels, I ended up in the far western corner of China, this region known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where there are Turkic speaking Muslims known as the Uyghur. Fascinating history, very different than the Hui, having lived in far West China, only recently incorporated in China proper. Very welcoming, very fascinating. And decided that to really understand the history of Islam in China and the history of the Silk Road, I had to move in that direction, and so began learning Turkish. Finished my PhD, mostly written about the Uyghur and my research all over China on that community.

Dru Gladney:
And was fortunate to get a post doc to go to Harvard and do Turkic languages, look at nomadic peoples, Central Asian studies, and continued studying Muslim minority communities, particularly in South Central Asia, Eurasia, and of course, learning Turkish, the best place to study Turkish at the time was Istanbul. So I ended up in Istanbul. And so now as an anthropologist, I say my village extends from Beijing to Istanbul. And I've had the opportunity to travel in many of the what are now known as the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia. Spent a lot of time in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, some Uzbekistan, mostly the Turkic speaking parts of Central Asia.

Mark Wood:
So this is kind of a detail that I happened to notice, and I'm just curious about. You've said that you prefer the term Muslim Chinese to Chinese Muslim. Tell us about that.

Dru Gladney:
Well, when I began to study the Muslims in China, I started with this group known as the Hui. And there was very little literature about them. The literature that was out there had portrayed them in one of two ways, either they were foreign Muslim minority, who were very isolated from Chinese society, antagonistic to integration, ready to rise in Jihad at any moment, and a threat to the integrity of Chinese society, and isolated for almost 1200 years. The other side was the extreme opposite view, was that they were Chinese Muslims. They had totally assimilated to Chinese society, that any outside community that came into China, groups like that Manchu or the Mongols, they were literally devoured by Chinese culture society, and were not Muslim at all. They were completely assimilated, which I think did violence to their own integrity as a people, who had managed to survive very diverse ways despite some very discriminatory policies, which now we see very, very vividly.

Dru Gladney:
So I was looking at both extremes and trying to figure out a way to communicate that diversity among this very complicated, very interesting community. So I thought by calling them Chinese Muslims, it sort of the emphasis was on China, of course. But it kind of called into doubt their own integrity as Muslim minority. So by just reversing that, Muslim Chinese, sort of like Asian Americans, Latino Americans, African Americans. It tried to give power and emphasis to their own sense of self and community. As an outsider, as a non Muslim, I could never understand how they managed to do that. But I had a great respect for the fact that through, for example, dietary habits, they didn't eat pork. In China, if you travel to China, how do you avoid pork?

Dru Gladney:
And for many generations, Chinese themselves couldn't understand that. These people were very strange, like vegans today. Some families find that hard to understand. So for the Muslims in China, this was a part of their own experience. And I tried to describe that as best as I could. So this is characteristics of Muslims societies, keeping halal. In Chinese the term is Qingzhen, which means pure and true, is their interpretation of halal. And that was the title of my dissertation, kind of got me interested in food culture. I, myself, gave up pork for 20 years to be able to do this research, and spent a lot of time in noodle restaurants, kind of really ate my way across the Silk Road. Lucky for me, it's fantastic food.

Mark Wood:
Doesn't sound bad to me.

Dru Gladney:
And that kind of northern wheat culture, noodles, dumplings. So this was very much part of their society. And to gain access to that community to understand them, I really tried to walk to some extent in their shoes. Of course, never even coming close. But for a small kid in Pomona wandering across Central Asia, spending time mostly with Muslims, it was really, for me, a wonderful time in my life to push myself. It was never easy. It was always very, very complicated being an American, for many of them, the first they'd ever encountered. Having that long legacy of US China relations, being a non Muslim, being a white male, in a somewhat closed society, not as much as in the Middle East, and yet, being warmly welcomed almost everywhere I went. That started to change, of course, dramatically after 9/11.

Dru Gladney:
And my research was heavily influenced by that period. Not only were Muslims again in China suspected of this history, but also they were marginalized like never before. So after, actually, I was in China during 9/11. I was near the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan in this southern corner of this region known as Xinjiang, in this area called [inaudible 00:26:13], where there's a Tajik minority Muslim nationality. And at that point, it was quite open. There was a German wine touring group coming through the area where I was doing research. And I was thinking about writing about wine culture along the Silk Road in this area, which now is booming, China's wine industry.

Dru Gladney:
But at the time, nobody anticipated what was about to happen with the war in Iraq and occupation of Afghanistan, right on the border of China. China was caught up in that, and they had been having tensions and issues with the Uyghur Muslim minority in Xinjiang, known as the Uyghur Autonomous Region. Uyghurs themselves refer to this region as Eastern Turkestan. And being an anthropologist, having begun to learn their language, they speak a Turkic, a branch of Turkish, early brach, Uyghur, a long, amazing illustrious history along the Silk Road, having to help bring Buddhism to China. They are now converted to Islam, all Muslim. And as a minority, being suspect and accused of separatism and terrorism, not unlike Tibetans and their loyalty to the Dalai Lama. But of course, for the Uyghurs, there is no Dalai Lama. There's no single leader. There's no single agenda.

Dru Gladney:
But they mostly have a very strong sense of land, selfhood, history and authenticity that has been much more difficult to integrate into China's policy. So since 9/11, there have been growing and significant tensions in the region. And being one of several scholars very concerned about the region, we wrote some very critical pieces about the government's policy and how it's affecting them, and never supporting independence or separatism, of course not supporting radical Islam or jihad. But as non Muslim, non local scholars, we felt duty to try to give voice to some of these complaints that the Uyghurs themselves had a hard time communicating to the outside world. That got us, of course, in trouble with the Chinese government. And my name ended up on a blacklist with about 16 other scholars. You can Google us as the Xinjiang 13, and made it almost nearly impossible for us to go back to China. I have not been back to the region since 2004.

Dru Gladney:
I have been able to go back to China a few times, but not like that, and have not been able to do that kind of field research ever again perhaps. I think it's unfortunate because I love the region. I love going to China. I love interacting and doing ethnography, that's the hallmark of anthropology in my opinion. And I've had to shift my research. One of the reasons I ended up going to Central Asia a lot, increasingly more to Southeast Asia to look at Muslim minority communities as well as the history and politics of those regions, since I could not go to China.

Patty Vest:
Yeah. Dru, you mentioned it a little bit. And I want to ask you a little more specific on, you've been very outspoken about the treatment of Muslims in China. And you even had an opportunity to testify in Congress before about this subject. Can you give us a little history on that and what's going on today?

Dru Gladney:
Yeah. I mean, as a US citizen, I feel it's my duty to use my experience in scholarship and make my opinion known, particularly with a group of people that don't have a voice, and where US policy has played a very important role in their treatment. There was a group that was accused of being a terrorist organization that the US supported China's claim in this. Because of that, 21 Uyghurs were taken to Guantanamo Bay and incarcerated for, most of them, over 10, 15 years. They've all been released now. But nevertheless, they were caught up in this US war on terror. Most of us who studied the issue thought unjustifiably so. Of course, the issue's complicated. I would say, in the last five to 10 years, we've seen increasing incidents of Xinjiang related terrorism, Uyghur related terrorism.

Dru Gladney:
We know there are Uyghurs who've now fought with ISIS. So the situation, like I said, is extremely complicated. However, at the beginning of all of this, most of us thought the Uyghurs were primarily concerned about their own civil rights, sovereignty, human rights, treatment. I'd written that Chinese policy towards minorities by and large was pretty progressive in a sense that they, in their constitution, they recognize ethnic minorities, gave them autonomy, gave them authority, gave them legal rights for bilingual education, for example, unlike the United States. And China supported the study of these languages. They had special privileges. Many of them were not subject to the one child policy. They were given educational opportunities, scholarships.

Dru Gladney:
And the government invested heavily in these regions. However, it's impossible to know what was extracted from the regions to do this. And we were always suggesting these local communities should have a stronger voice in their own affairs. Now having said that, I think Americans are more aware of the situation in Tibet, and increasingly Xinjiang among the Uyghurs, than other minority communities in China who've actually done pretty good in this policy, where they've had more authority and have benefited through Chinese education and with the rise of China economically and other ways. They have, many of these communities have done pretty good and are pretty very supported.

Dru Gladney:
But other groups, like the Uyghurs, the Inner Mongolians, the Mongolians in Inner Mongolia, the Tibetans who've had a long history and a memory of separate governments, independence, some of them had governments that recognized internationally, like the Tibetan government, signed treaties with the early Communist government. So they have this history and memory of sovereignty and identity that is impossible to erase. But how do you integrate them into a rising nation state? I teach a course on nationalism and ethnicity in Asia. And I talk about: How do you accommodate this sort of groups that have been recognized and give them formal authority by the government, but are not at all allowed to consider independence? Whereas, right across the border in the former Soviet Union, we see now there is a Kazakhstan. There is an Uzbekistan.

Dru Gladney:
So many Uyghurs and Tibetans look to that and say, "Now it's our turn." How do you do that? How do you deal with that as a government? The United States doesn't have a very good history of this either, so I don't think we're in any position to judge. But as an anthropologist, I feel that one of the things I can do is try to express opinions that I've heard and ways particularly in our government, where it affects our policy. And I feel a responsibility to do that even when it's very critical of the US government. Interestingly enough, now that we're on the subject, the issue of the Uyghur in China, the Uyghurs, is probably one of the few bipartisan issues that are supported by both sides of the aisle today.

Dru Gladney:
And Marco Rubio signed a bill supporting the Uyghurs that was cosponsored by several Democrats. And so the Uyghurs have a sort of sense of hope about the future, particularly in the US. Many of them are very active. Some of the largest Uyghur organizations are based in the United States now in DC, also in Germany and Canada and Australia. But of course, the situation in their region is extremely dire. The government has really stepped up its level of control and restraint through this what they call reeducation centers. Most scholars call them gulags, concentration camps, mainly because nobody's allowed in and people go in there and never come out. And they've cut off communication. A really draconian movement that we've seen really in the government's response to the coronavirus.

Dru Gladney:
I mean, an autocratic system like China, they can close off a city. They can round up a million, up to three million of the Uyghurs, up to 30% of their entire population. We're talking about only about 10 million people here in Western China. Maybe up to three million incarcerated. Only a government like China could do this. I think it's, as someone who's lived and traveled in the area, has tried to learn the language, I feel it's my duty to sort of speak out about that and say I feel they're creating a worse situation for the future than they've ever had in the past, alienation and discrimination because the Uyghurs do have a long history. They have a great sense of self and pride, [inaudible 00:37:15], language, culture, music, religion.

Dru Gladney:
And somehow, the government needs to reassess this policy. The US certainly has a role. How much of a role is questionable these days. Clearly, the rise of China has changed the map, has changed the world. And the US, I don't feel is responding appropriately to that changed situation. It's something that is, as a professor, is fascinating because of course, students are very engaged, very glued to the headlines and their Twitter feeds, and are much more aware of this contemporary situation than their predecessors. And for me, being in the classroom, it's thrilling to look at these issues with them and try to set them in a larger, broader, more historical context.

Mark Wood:
So you've also done work on what's called China's new Silk Road.

Dru Gladney:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mark Wood:
I assume that has something to do with not being able to go back to some of the places you used to be able to go to. Can you tell us about that? What does that mean, the new Silk Road?

Dru Gladney:
This is part of the president of China, Xi Jinping's belt and road initiative. Goes under various names, none of them very easily digested. But basically, you can think of it as part of global China, and China's reaching out, particularly to garner resources. And China has a large population, but very little in terms of natural resources, arable land, water, energy resources, mineral resources. But as really the manufacturer for the world, it has tremendous economic clout. And Xi Jinping has sought to reach out to other regions and begin to build China's influence and market in the world, particularly markets for China's goods in these developing economies.

Dru Gladney:
So on the one hand, I think it's important to note that China is investing in infrastructure. The belt and road initiative, as it suggests, is an infrastructure initiative. A lot of 20th century infrastructure, rail, air, ocean, shipping, but also 21st century, digital infrastructure. We think of Huawei and 5G. This is why the government is extremely invested in these initiatives because it sees a way for China to extend its influence. Of course, that makes us nervous, as we should be. And I think historically, as a scholar of the Silk Road, as someone who's lived and traveled and read most of my life about that region, I personally don't think China is interested in expanding its territory. I think it has its hands full with its own territory and governing a billion population.

Dru Gladney:
But on the other hand, China needs resources, so it wants to extend its economic influence far beyond China, especially into Europe, which is one of its major markets. So China is invested heavily in areas that the West is not, particularly Central Asia, East Asia, I mean Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia, Burma, for example, Pakistan, having warm water ports for its increasingly blue navy. Of course, there's going to be conflicts with the US influence in the region. My hope is that we can begin to deal with these in a peaceful and cooperative manner. It could be good for everyone, particularly addressing issues and problems that confront us in our humanity, such as climate change, such as virus and diseases that confront us as humans, not as Chinese or as American, Westerners, et cetera. Only through cooperation and dialogue, which is the hallmark of the Silk Road.

Dru Gladney:
When we think of the Silk Road, it's a great metaphor for exchange and trade and interaction and the mutual interfacing of cultures and peoples. It's not always been a peaceful Silk Road. There's been a lot of speed bumps along the way. But I think by and large, my view is that it's a great metaphor for the need to communicate, to keep dialogue open, to do exchange, to learn about each other. And where I learned most about the peoples on the Silk Road were in the marketplaces and the restaurants, where you exchanged goods and commodities and ideas. And to me, China's new Silk Road, the upside of it is this more, I would say, this greater opportunity for exchange and interaction. The downside, there's a lot of downsides. Of course, populism supports walls and barriers and nationalism and closing the barricades and buttoning down.

Dru Gladney:
And I find that that's the trend today, the problem with something like a coronavirus is everyone blames the other guy and the outsider. I think only through cooperation and integrated work together can we solve these problems that face our common humanity, such as climate change, such as disease. And so populism I think is antithetical to that effort, to really save our planet and to save our species. And it's becoming really an existential threat to all of us as humans, these kinds of issues. So populism is not in my way, the way I teach in my anthropology globalization course, we don't think of anthropologists as doing globalization so much. But really, the world has become a much smaller place.

Dru Gladney:
And the Silk Road was a place where I learned that crossing borders, expanding your understanding of other societies and cultures is a great space, an integrated space, a well traveled space, to explore what it's like for us as humans to not only travel the world, but also interstellar travel now. This has become, some anthropologists have looked at this. What's that going to mean for our species? Looking at Pacific voyaging, for example. South Pacific islanders discovered Hawaii, et cetera, navigation, wayfaring. I think anthropologists have still a lot to say about that. Though our little tiny villages and cultures have been globalized like never before, nevertheless, we as humans still have a sense of place. I'm still a Pomona boy. I still like my In and Out burgers. And I have a very complicated relationship with the Dodgers. But nevertheless, local teams, really I think root us as humans into our communities.

Dru Gladney:
But today, we really also have to have branches into the outer stratosphere. And anthropology is one way to begin to look at those connections, particularly, one thing anthropologists have always been interested in is genealogy, in ancestry, where we came from. And I, myself, have a history of family genealogy coming from Ireland, family genealogy and looking at that migration to a new land, a new frontier. Came over in the 1760s, several brothers and their widowed mother, King George the Third land grant. Have a family cemetery in Winnsboro, South Carolina. So all of that roots me in a kind of history. But it's also a colonial history that is implicated in the expansion into the new world and the Americas, and the devastation that that wrought to the native peoples here. And I think as humans, we have to learn our history, but also bear responsibility for that history. And that's a journey that we all need to take in order for our species to survive.

Mark Wood:
On that note, we're going to wrap this up.

Dru Gladney:
It's kind of a dour note.

Patty Vest:
Well, we were going to ask you about SARS, but I think this is a better ending note.

Mark Wood:
We've been talking with professor of anthropology, Dru Gladney. Thanks, Dru.

Dru Gladney:
Thank you.

Patty Vest:
Thank you, Dru. And to all who stuck with us this far, thanks for listening to Sagecast, the podcast of Â鶹´«Ã½. Until next time.