BUZZ
Stanford University is closing down a DEI fellowship offered for about two decades due to budget issues and the prohibition on affirmative action.
“Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence Doctoral Fellowship Program” is going to “sunset” at the end of the year according to the Stanford Daily.
“This year’s DARE cohort’s fellowship has been reduced from the typical two-year program to one year,” the student newspaper reported. “New programs supporting graduate students will be announced in the winter and launch in the fall of 2026, according to [an administrator].”
The fellowship paid nearly $60,000 for year. Students also had access to mentoring, “[s]tructured seminars[,] and professional development modules to investigate and prepare for academic careers,” according to a university website.
The university marketed the program toward “underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities, first-generation college students, women in fields such as natural science and engineering, LGBT students, students with disabilities, and others whose backgrounds and experiences would diversify the professoriate in their academic fields,” according to the student newspaper.
The Fix identified only three white males, among the 48 most recent winners listed on the university website. There is also a fellow who uses “they/he” pronouns and appears white.
“The program replacing DARE will support students from all backgrounds who could benefit from similar mentorship and professional development,” the student newspaper reported.
The university previously discriminated on the basis of race and ethnicity.
“After the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), which ruled against race-based affirmative action in college admissions, DARE no longer considered race and ethnicity when selecting fellows,” the Stanford Daily reported, based on a statement sent out by the university.
The fellows in the 2023-2025 class had just one white male, a Marine veteran, according to a Fix review of past winners.
Current fellows complained about the program closing.
“What is the university going to replace DARE with in terms of a very tangible, material commitment to diversifying the professoriate,” Tania Flores, “a current fellow and seventh-year Ph.D. candidate in the Iberian and Latin American cultures department,” told the student newspaper.
Computer science doctoral student Sarah Jobalia shared similar concerns.
“I know that a lot of people in DARE have research that is deeply embedded in questions of diversity and questions of trying to build a world that is safe and inclusive for everyone,” Jobalia said. “A lot of people were dealing with seeing limits being put on their research, seeing funding being taken away, etc. I think we all were kind of worried about the DARE program.”
“Her research centers on building more accessible tools for animation artists to represent characters of all backgrounds on screen,” according to her bio. “By focusing on how hair type affects the way hair looks and moves, she builds tools that are equitably representative of all styles.”
The university still lists another fellowship called “Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education,” for “incoming doctoral students with outstanding scholarly promise who have the potential to contribute to the diversity of their academic fields and departments.”
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