How Elitism Marginalizes Academics
How Elitism Marginalizes Academics
How Elitism Marginalizes Academics
When applying for grant money is a ritual of rejection.
December 5, 2019
By Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera
Summary
At universities like mine they involve balancing overwhelming teaching loads and scant access to databases with the knowledge that there is very little chance of receiving external funding.
I've been especially aware of that fact recently - ever since the University of Puerto Rico was put under austerity measures in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
To my knowledge, no scholar at a university like mine - where 98 percent of students are Latinx and around 75 percent receive Pell Grants - has ever received it.
Matthew Goldfeder, a former director of ACLS fellowship programs, said once, "It is not surprising that excellent humanities scholars have appointments at top research universities, and that we have fellows from those institutions most years." To me it is surprising.
Institutional data from the National Endowment for the Humanities are not unlike those of ACLS competitions: Affluent private universities dominate the list.
Maybe a combination of lower teaching loads, smaller classes, larger salaries, and institutional support allows those faculty members to develop ideas and proposals in ways that cannot occur at my university.
My university has linguistic and cultural depths that make it exceptional in comparison with top-ranked universities.
Reference
Herlihy-Mera, J. (2019, December 5). How Elitism Marginalizes Academics. Retrieved December 10, 2019, from https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191204-Herlihy-Mera.