Ford Diversity Fellows Urged to Defend Affirmative Action
By Ronald Roach

WASHINGTON, D.C.
While their fellowship programs have become open to candidates of any race or ethnicity, the roughly 230 graduate students attending the 2005 Conference of Ford Fellows earlier this month found themselves encouraged to defend affirmative action and to continue efforts to diversify the faculties of U.S. colleges and universities.

Ford Foundation President Susan V. Berresford, foundation officials and keynote speakers urged conference attendees to help bring more under-represented minorities into the professoriate. Drawn primarily from 2004 and 2005 fellowship awardees, the audience was encouraged to complete their Ph.D and postgraduate programs. Noted UCLA and Columbia University law professor Kimberle W. Crenshaw exhorted students to vigorously defend affirmative action programs, but to be aware of language that affirmative action opponents have used to attack the policy.

The two-day meeting was the first national gathering of participants in what has been the nation’s largest Ph.D. support program for under-represented minorities since the program underwent eligibility and name changes. Last year, the foundation changed the eligibility criteria from six under-represented U.S. groups, including African-Americans, American Indians and Mexican Americans, to U.S. citizens of any race or ethnicity. Known previously as the Fellowship for Minorities, the programs are now known as the Diversity Fellowships.

Since 1979, the program has provided fellowship funding for some 2,500 African-American, American Indian and Latino doctoral recipients. The program provides tuition and stipend funding at the predoctoral,  dissertation and postdoctoral stages.

Berresford told the fellows that the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grutter v. Bollinger proved to be a factor in the foundation’s decision to open up the eligibility criteria. Though the 2003 court decision allowed
for the use of race-conscious admissions in higher education, it said race or ethnicity had to be one of many factors and applicants to programs should receive individual scrutiny. Ford officials expanded the programs to “comply with the spirit of Grutter,” said Berresford.