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1939–2025
Ralph L. Bolton II, professor emeritus of anthropology at Pomona College in Claremont, CA, died December 3, 2025, while visiting a community of friends and writing about the culture of Tangier, Morocco. He was born in Lancaster, PA, on October 28, 1939, graduating in 1961 from Pomona College with a major in international relations. After starting a doctoral program in political science at MIT, he learned about and applied to a newly opened program called the Peace Corps and was accepted as a volunteer to serve in Peru. After an extensive training program, he was given the title of anthropologist and sent to the Peruvian Altiplano to work for an International Labour Organization charged with improving agricultural conditions for small family farms in communities around Lake Titicaca.
After three years living in a campamento on Chijnaya, Ralph wrote, “My experiences in Peru were transformative, expanding my horizons and allowing me to diminish my introverted nature and my sense of self-doubt. I would become an anthropologist.” Deciding not to return to MIT, he enrolled at Cornell University, where he completed his PhD in anthropology in 1972.
Ralph began his career at Pomona College in 1971, teaching a wide range of courses including Andean anthropology, medical anthropology, human sexuality, and HIV/AIDS. Collaborating with scholars in Belgium, he carried out international research for more than 20 years on HIV among gay men. He was among a small group of anthropologists who in the mid-1980s helped to create the AIDS & Anthropology Research Group (AARG). He was a member of the AIDS Task Force and subsequently the AIDS Commission of the American Anthropological Association.
Recognized for his research in several areas, with over a 120 publications, Ralph was awarded three Fulbright Awards to Norway, Peru, and Belgium; received the annual Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Service to Anthropology in 2010; and, in 2025, received the prestigious Malinowski Award from the Society for Applied Anthropology (SFAA) for lifetime achievement in dedication of anthropology to the solution of human problems. He was also the recipient of two Stirling Awards for Culture & Personality Studies from the Society for Psychological Anthropology and the C.S. Ford Award for Cross-Cultural Research given by the Society for Cross-Cultural Research.
Ralph’s contributions go beyond academic publications and research. Keeping to his values that it is necessary “to work with communities to achieve their goals, not merely to study them,” Ralph was invited back in 2004 to Chijnaya, Peru, after a 30-year absence. Although his visit was intended to be as a tourist, when the community learned the date of his arrival, they threw an all-day party to welcome him back. In true Andean fashion, they “anticipated reciprocity,” and said they had some projects on which they needed help. The result was the creation of the Chijnaya Foundation in 2005. The foundation supports health, education, and community development in rural Andean communities.
Ralph will be remembered for his generosity, warmth, openness, scholarship, and “respect for traditional knowledge and local understandings,” to use his words.
Peter Nardi, Pitzer College