--- alias: - Peter Skafish - Dr. Peter Skafish - Skafish category: UFO & Anomalous Phenomena created: 2026-10-03 location: California relations: - fn: 5 role: co-founder with Garry Nolan; 'Director of Research' (2023), 'executive director' (2024 and on the foundation's website in October 2026); secretary and principal officer on the 2024 Form 990, reportable compensation $20,000 start: 2023-08-15 type: founded with: '[[Sol Foundation]]' - fn: 1 role: founder and director, as stated in his IKKM biography and signatory line type: director_of with: '[[Institute of Speculative and Critical Inquiry]]' - fn: 1 role: maître de conférences associé, per his IKKM biography (dates not given) type: employed_by with: '[[Collège de France]]' - fn: 1 role: Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow in anthropology, per his IKKM biography (dates not given) type: employed_by with: '[[McGill University]]' - fn: 10 role: anthropology, on the list Avi Loeb supplied to DefenseScoop start: 2026-06 type: member_of with: '[[UAP Science Advisory Council]]' summary: Sociocultural anthropologist (PhD, University of California, Berkeley) who co-founded the Sol Foundation with Garry Nolan in 2023, signed its 2024 Form 990 as secretary, and joined a UAP Science Advisory Council in June 2026. tags: - Person - UFO - UAP - Anthropologist - SolFoundation - Disclosure updated: 2026-10-03 --- Peter Skafish holds a doctorate in sociocultural anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. His IKKM biography lists appointments as maître de conférences associé at the Collège de France, Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the anthropology department of [McGill University](/organizations/mcgill-university/), Fondation Fyssen postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale, visiting faculty at Berkeley and research fellow at the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. It states that he was founding and directing a research center, the Institute of Speculative and Critical Inquiry.[^1] He co-founded the [Sol Foundation](/organizations/sol-foundation/) with [Garry Nolan](/people/garry-nolan/) in 2023.[^2] ### Scholarship The same biography credits Skafish with the introduction to the English translation of Claude Lévi-Strauss's "De Montaigne à Montaigne" and with co-editing "Comparative Metaphysics: Ontology After Anthropology." Its list of research interests reads "anthropological ontology, cosmopolitics, religion and secularism, outsider thought, planetarity, translation." A project statement written during the fellowship describes a book manuscript, "The Interpretation of Equivocations," arguing for "beings incompossible with those of modernity" and taking the Chinese medical concepts of qi and the pulse as its first case.[^1] His book "Rough Metaphysics" was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2023.[^3] Its subject is the American writer Jane Roberts and the "Seth" material she produced as a trance medium; the subtitle is "The Speculative Thought and Mediumship of Jane Roberts."[^3] ### Sol Foundation Skafish was introduced to Nolan, who said the two concluded that the field lacked "a sort of professionalization of the arena." Interviewed in September 2023 as Sol's director of research, Skafish said, "What happened in 2017 and after wasn't a big surprise to me," and, of the legislative and declassified record, that "we would probably be close to settling the question of whether these things the 'genuine' UAP are non-anthropogenic." He added that "no one should be expected to believe that UAP are non-anthropogenic vehicles."[^2] He said the foundation would produce white papers on legislative oversight and on "helping the intelligence community, but also ensuring that it stays within ethical bounds and the law," and he described one aim as to "lower the temperature" of the disclosure debate.[^2] The foundation's website, read on October 3, 2026, lists him as "Co-Founder & Executive Director," beside Nolan as "Co-Founder & Executive Director of the Board."[^4] The 2024 Form 990 of the Sol Foundation lists Skafish as secretary at one hour a week with reportable compensation of $20,000 and other compensation of $40,000, names him as principal officer, and carries his signature dated November 16, 2025.[^5] Skafish said in a December 2024 email that the second symposium was convened because of "a divisive election season and the likely failure of the UAP Disclosure Act."[^6] The March 2024 Sol white paper "UAP in Crowded Skies" names him as executive director.[^7] He is the author of Volume 1, No. 6 of the foundation's papers (November 2024), "The Prospect of Executive Branch [Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena](/concepts/unidentified-anomalous-phenomena/) Secrecy: The Harm to Congress and Potential Remedies," whose abstract begins that "long-standing secrecy within the executive branch may have concealed decades of UAP knowledge, research programs, and potentially retrieved technologies from Congress itself."[^8] ### Letters and councils Skafish signed the November 12, 2024 letter to Congress urging passage of the review-board provisions of the [Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act](/concepts/unidentified-anomalous-phenomena-disclosure-act/), identifying himself as "Co-Founder, Sol Foundation; Sociocultural Anthropologist; Researcher; Author." The signers included Garry Nolan, [Avi Loeb](/people/avi-loeb/), [John B. Alexander](/people/john-b-alexander/), [Christopher Mellon](/people/christopher-mellon/), [Tim Gallaudet](/people/tim-gallaudet/), [Luis Elizondo](/people/luis-elizondo/), [Diana Walsh Pasulka](/people/diana-walsh-pasulka/) and Yuan Fung of the UAP Disclosure Fund.[^9] In June 2026 Loeb gave DefenseScoop a list of twelve members of a "UAP Science Advisory Council" that included Skafish, listed under anthropology, with Nolan, Gallaudet, Michael Shermer, Ben Lamm and others. An official of the [Office of the Director of National Intelligence](/organizations/director-of-national-intelligence/) said the council was among advisory groups to an interagency UAP Governance Board.[^10] [^1]: Peter Skafish, IKKM Weimar former-fellows page. https://www.ikkm-weimar.de/en/former-fellows/peter-skafish/ [^2]: Micah Hanks, "The Sol Foundation: How a New Think Tank of Academics is Applying 'Cutting-Edge Research' to the UAP Mystery," *The Debrief*, September 12, 2023. https://thedebrief.org/the-sol-foundation-how-a-new-think-tank-of-academics-is-applying-cutting-edge-research-the-uap-mystery/ [^3]: Open Library edition record for "Rough Metaphysics: The Speculative Thought and Mediumship of Jane Roberts" (University of Minnesota Press, 2023, 384 pages, ISBN 9781517915155). https://openlibrary.org/isbn/9781517915155.json [^4]: The Sol Foundation, home page, "People" section, https://thesolfoundation.org/ , read October 3, 2026. [^5]: IRS Form 990 for 2024, EIN 93-3649160, object ID 202543269349300004. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/933649160/202543269349300004/full [^6]: Chrissy Newton, "Academics, Investors, and UAP Seekers Unite at the 2024 Sol Foundation Symposium," *The Debrief*, December 20, 2024. https://thedebrief.org/academics-investors-and-uap-seekers-unite-at-the-2024-sol-foundation-symposium/ [^7]: "UAP in Crowded Skies," The White Papers of the Sol Foundation, vol. 1, no. 2, March 2024. https://thesolfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Sol_WhitePaper_Vol1N2.pdf [^8]: The Sol Foundation, "All Publications," entry for Peter Skafish, Vol. 1 No. 6, November 2024, https://thesolfoundation.org/all-publications/ , read October 3, 2026. [^9]: Signatory letter dated November 12, 2024, in the statement of Tim Gallaudet, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, November 13, 2024. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO12/20241113/117721/HHRG-118-GO12-Wstate-GallaudetPhDRearAdmiralUSNavyRetT-20241113-SD001.pdf [^10]: "New science advisory council forms to help US government 'resolve the UAP mystery,'" *DefenseScoop*, June 17, 2026. https://defensescoop.com/2026/06/17/new-science-advisory-council-forms-to-help-us-government-resolve-the-uap-mystery/