The Ford Foundation’s fellowship program, a half century–old effort to bring racial and ethnic diversity to US academic institutions by supporting select scholars, is ending, according to a statement issued earlier this month. The foundation will still award a full round of fellowships in 2023, but will award fewer in 2024 and will officially conclude the program in 2028. Sunsetting the renowned program, which provides annual stipends for trainees in areas such as psychology, engineering, history, and natural sciences, prompted expressions of concern from alumni and others in academia.
“I mourn the loss of this safe space for the generations of scholars of color who will no longer have the support of the Ford Foundation,” program alumnus Adriana Briscoe, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Irvine, writes in an email to The Scientist.
Since its inception in 1967, the initiative has supported 6,000 predoctoral, dissertation, and postdoctoral scholars, ...
