Okay, I don't believe I have ever negged your posts (if that is what the little red thingamabob is called) so let's discuss this idea. It won't change your mind, but let's discuss it. So, there are many professors that devote their research to something with which you disagree and think is stupid. That is fair enough. I'm sure I wouldn't have to go all that far to find examples of that myself. They may be different than your examples, but I'm sure I could find them.
But, this particular professor has most likely published her work in one of the many small journals in her field and in this case, it is The Contemporary Pacific: a journal of island affairs. Ms. Barker's field of study is sociocultural anthropology with a specific emphasis on the nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands. She also advocates for Marshallese (sp?)who were affected by this testing.
Most people don't even give the people that live in this area a single thought. Ever. They don't seem to understand that this is an island chain and that the effects were felt in areas that did not have relocated people, or even that the residents had to relocate at all. If the government shows up in your subdivision and says, "hey! you have to move to Norman because we are going to bomb the h*ll out of your property'" and moving to Norman couldn't get you far enough away from the fallout, you might have some lasting effects that are more than just physical. So studying these effects are what anthropologists do. And in Ms. Barker's case, how the rest of America and its government views and treats specific populations is what she researches.
Sponge Bob Squarepants is her vehicle for doing this, for showing interconnected relationships and policy and history. Her job at UWash, I'm sure, depends upon publication of her work and is probably counted.
You may think it is a waste of time and effort, but before their story and their lives are lost to us, she is cataloguing what the people who have lived through this have to say and their experiences and filtering them with her point of view. You may disagree with her point of view in which case you need to go back to school, get an advanced degree in anthropology (if you don't have one already), get hired at an institution of higher education, write an article refuting her work, submit it for publication, have it go out for peer review, get it accepted and then published. There are a ton of sh*tty journals in a lot of fields out there, and I have no expertise in her field so I don't know where this Contemporary Pacific one ranks.
None of this matters to you. I get it, but if you are going to reject something out of hand, you really ought to learn more about it so you don't waste your education. That is what the people at Campus Reform do. Instead of taking the opportunity to learn more about what happened, what is happening, and what might happen they simply read one sentence and jump up and down screaming, "she dissed Sponge Bob!".
Here is one article out of many that discusses the people of the Marshall Islands and the nuclear legacy: It's WaPo, so may be behind a paywall.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/11/27/a-ground-zero-forgotten/?utm_term=.3d3f2959cdc8
Vote however you vote, it's your privilege, but be informed.
It takes less time than you think to stop the knee-jerk reaction to the Campus Reform whistle and explore and inform yourself. It may not change your mind, but at least you can discern their agenda.