It is with excitement (but sadness) that I announce the departure of Alex ‘rex’ Golub and Kerim Friedman from Savage Minds. For ten years they have been central to this blog and key to introducing the discipline of anthropology to social media and the Internet. We’re sorry to see them go. But we’re excited by the new opportunities they are pursuing, and hope that this will give Savage Minds the opportunity to enter a new era.
Alex will be leaving the blog to take a new position as the American Anthropological Association’s new Director of Communications and Public Affairs. There, he will be responsible for directing the Association’s media outreach and public education efforts. “The AAA has been getting serious about social media for some time now,” said Ed Liebow, executive director of the AAA, “reaching out to ‘Rex’ seemed a natural next step, both for him and for us.”
We all know Alex is excited by the new position. “At the end of the day you have to look at the numbers,” he explained to us on the Savage Minds email list. ” SM has ten thousand twitter followers, and the AAA has twenty thousand. Public anthropology is not just about producing great content, it is about making sure as many people as possible know who I am. The AAA offers an unrivaled platform for people to learn more about me. It’s hard to walk away from that.”
We all know Kerim has been struggling to combine anthropology and film for some time, and it turns out that film has finally won. Kerim will be leaving SM to focus on building a small development studio with seed money from Joel Silver.
The studio’s first project will be “Please don’t eat me, sir,” a children’s film featuring wily, unpredictable dinosaurs. “Jurassic World is going to change everything when it drops this summer,” said Kerim. “We all know the dinosaurs went extinct. This is our chance to explain the anthropocene to the next generation of environmentalists. And also ontology. Can a velociraptor ever really know how a stegasaurus feels? It’s something I’ve always wondered, and now it’s something I can explore through cinema.” Please note that Kerim is in the process of moving from Taiwan to Tarzana, so he may not immediately respond to emails or tweets in the next few months.
But again, don’t worry — Savage Minds will still be the blog you have always known and loved. We have lots of new plans for the rest of 2015. Look forward to my new invited-post series entitled “Feelings: We All Have Them” and another round of interviews from Ryan focusing on how much the academy pisses you off. Rex, Kerim, and the rest of us thank you for reading the blog, and hope you will keep reading in this time of transition!
So many feels.
Of course, as Rex knows, we welcome him with partially open access arms. As for Kerim, the film project sounds quite fascinating, and promises to settle once and for all the question of whether dinosaur ontology recapitulates philology.
Good riddance! Now I am the King of Savage Minds!
Carole, maybe your new series can help us through this difficult, difficult time.
Closing my eyes and visualizing a group hug, Ryan. We’re all feeling a little lost right now……
Thanks Carole. I do feel better now. So…is now a bad time to start talking about licensing the Savage Minds brand?
Well, we’re all used to getting a big charge from AAA every April.