Editing David Graeber (section)

=== "Academic exile" and London (2005–2020) ===
On May 25, 2006, Graeber was invited to give the [[Malinowski Memorial Lecture]] at the [[London School of Economics]]. Each year, the LSE anthropology department asks an anthropologist at a relatively early stage of their career to give the Malinowski Lecture, and only invites those considered to have made significant contributions to anthropological theory. Graeber's address was called "Beyond Power/Knowledge: an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity".<ref name=malinowski/> It was later edited into an essay, "Dead zones of the imagination: On violence, bureaucracy and interpretive labor".<ref name=deadzones/> The same year, Graeber was asked to present the keynote address in the 100th anniversary Diamond Jubilee meetings of the [[Association of Social Anthropologists]].<ref name=asa/> In April 2011, he presented the anthropology department's annual Distinguished Lecture at Berkeley,<ref name=berkeley/> and in May 2012 he delivered the second annual [[Marilyn Strathern]] Lecture at Cambridge (the first was delivered by Strathern).<ref>{{cite web|title=The Strathern Lecture|url=https://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/about-us/the-strathern-lecture|access-date=September 4, 2020|work=Department of Social Anthropology|date=November 28, 2017|publisher=University of Cambridge|archive-date=September 9, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200909120751/https://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/about-us/the-strathern-lecture|url-status=live}}</ref>

After his dismissal from Yale, Graeber was unable to secure another position at an American university.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Nader|first=Laura|date=January 22, 2019|title=Unravelling the Politics of Silencing|url=https://brill.com/view/journals/puan/1/1/article-p81_81.xml|journal=Public Anthropologist|language=en|volume=1|issue=1|pages=81–95|doi=10.1163/25891715-00101006|s2cid=213081453|issn=2589-1707|access-date=September 5, 2020|archive-date=September 9, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200909120543/https://brill.com/view/journals/puan/1/1/article-p81_81.xml|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}</ref> He applied for more than twenty, but despite a strong track record and letters of recommendation from several prominent anthropologists, never made it past the first round.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last=Graeber|first=David|date=January 22, 2019|title=It Wasn't a Tenure Case – a Personal Testimony, with Reflections|url=https://brill.com/view/journals/puan/1/1/article-p96_96.xml|journal=Public Anthropologist|language=en|volume=1|issue=1|pages=96–104|doi=10.1163/25891715-00201009|s2cid=214299282|issn=2589-1707|access-date=September 5, 2020|archive-date=September 9, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200909120543/https://brill.com/view/journals/puan/1/1/article-p81_81.xml|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}</ref> At the same time, a number of foreign universities approached him with offers.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /> In an article on his "academic exile" from the United States, ''[[The Chronicle of Higher Education]]'' interviewed several anthropology professors who agreed that Graeber's political activism could have played a role in his unsuccessful search, describing the field as "radical in the abstract" (in the words of [[Laura Nader]]) but intolerant of direct political action. Another factor suggested by the article was that Graeber had acquired a reputation as being personally difficult or "uncollegial", especially in light of allegations of poor conduct made by Yale during the dispute over his dismissal.<ref name=":1" /> Graeber himself interpreted his exclusion from American academia as a direct result of his dismissal from Yale, likening it to "[[Blackballing|black-balling]] in a social club", and arguing that the charge of "uncollegiality" glossed a variety of other personal qualities, from his political activism to his working-class background, that marked him as a trouble-maker within the academic hierarchy.<ref name=":3" /> Laura Nader, reflecting on Graeber's case amongst other examples of "academic silencing" in anthropology, speculated that the real reasons could have included Graeber's growing reputation as a public intellectual,<ref name=":2" /> and his tendency to "write in English" rather than jargon.<ref name=":1" />

From 2008 to 2013, Graeber was a lecturer and a reader at [[Goldsmiths, University of London|Goldsmiths College]] of the [[University of London]]. In 2013, he accepted a professorship at the London School of Economics.<ref name=":1">{{cite news|last=Shea|first=Christopher|date=April 15, 2013|title=A Radical Anthropologist Finds Himself in Academic 'Exile'|newspaper=Chronicle of Higher Education|url=http://chronicle.com/article/A-Radical-Anthropologist-Finds/138499/|url-status=live|access-date=April 17, 2013|archive-date=April 17, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130417105924/http://chronicle.com/article/A-Radical-Anthropologist-Finds/138499/}}</ref><ref name="WNYC: Occupying Democracy" />

Graeber was a founding member of the Institute for Experimental Arts in Greece. He gave a lecture with the title "How social and economic structure influences the Art World" in the International MultiMedia Poetry Festival organized by the Institute for Experimental Arts supported by the Department of Anthropology of the [[London School of Economics|London School of Economics and Political Science]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Graeber|first=David|date=September 4, 2019|title=How social and economic structure influences the Art World|url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCF-8OQj0RE|url-status=live|access-date=September 4, 2020|website=Youtube|archive-date=September 26, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200926034955/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCF-8OQj0RE}}</ref>