Jennifer Raff

Jennifer Anne Raff (née Jennifer Anne Kedzie, August 29, 1979) is an American anthropological geneticist, science communicator, and a former president of the American Association of Anthropological Genetics. She specializes in the anthropological genetics of pre-Columbian, North American indigenous populations.

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Quotes

Anthropological geneticists should participate in public engagement because of the complexity of their work, its implications for human health and societies, and its tendency to be co-opted for particular political or social agendas. They are positioned to offer important contributions to public conversations on issues of race, genetic identity, history, and conflict. There are multiple avenues to public outreach for academics; among them, social media is a powerful, underused tool.
- (2015). "Anthropological Genetics and Social Media". Vital Topics Forum, American Anthropologist. DOI:10.1111/aman.12370.

... Getting the science wrong has very real consequences. For example, when a community doesn’t vaccinate children because they’re afraid of “toxins” and think that prayer (or diet, exercise, and “clean living”) is enough to prevent infection, outbreaks happen.
- How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists. Impact of Social Sciences Blog (2016).

The Tlingit maintain that their ancestors were a seafaring people who have lived in this region since the dawn of history. This discovery of this man, whom the Tlingit called Shuká Káa ("Man Ahead of Us"), was consistent with oral histories that they descend from an ancient, coastally adapted people who engaged in long-distance trade.
- "Introduction". Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas. New York: Grand Central Publishing. 2022. ISBN 153874970X.

In her new book, “Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas,” Raff beautifully integrates new data from different sciences (archaeology, genetics, linguistics) and different ways of knowing, including Indigenous oral traditions, in a masterly retelling of the story of how, and when, people reached the Americas. While admittedly not an archaeologist herself, Raff skillfully reveals how well-dated archaeological sites, including recently announced 22,000-year-old human footprints from White Sands, N.M., are at odds with the Clovis first hypothesis. She builds a persuasive case with both archaeological and genetic evidence that the path to the Americas was coastal (the Kelp Highway hypothesis) rather than inland, and that Beringia was not a bridge but a homeland — twice the size of Texas — inhabited for millenniums by the ancestors of the First Peoples of the Americas.
Throughout, Raff effectively models how science is done, how hypotheses are tested, and how new data are used to refute old ideas and generate new ones.
- Jeremy DeSilva, (February 8, 2022)"review of Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas by Jennifer DeSilva". The New York Times.