Toni Morrison (1931–2019)2 Introduction There is a problem of gaze at the heart of academic global health. Because without naming this problem, we cannot have holistic discussions on imbalances in the authorship of academic global health publications. The audience for whom the paper was written would likely be other anthropologists who perform similar service in other countries working as foreigners—a role that may not exist if all such response teams were led by local experts—that is, if every country had the capacity (especially, the funds) to respond to their own outbreaks. ...note that the local versus foreign pose can shift depending on the person and the topic; an anthropologist from the same West African country, but of a different ethnicity to the location of the outbreak, may be a foreigner in relation to burial practices—foreignness could be defined by ethnicity, race, caste, geography, socioeconomic status and the issue in question. ...a paper would be published where our ‘ideal’ paper is published: in local journals, many of which may not be indexed in global databases or published in English,19 but contain publications addressing research questions and policy issues that would exist, irrespective of the presence and influence of foreign experts, foreign funds, foreign donors, foreign helpers or foreign