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Aspiring POC graduate students are taught that the NSF GRFP is the great equalizer and gives weight to outreach and activism. However, I have watched white folks who could not give less of a shit about marginalized folks get the GRFP and be upheld as paragons of virtue...(1/10) https://twitter.com/Meliseymo/status/1287002862682341376
...while the more marginalized GRFP recipients spend all their waking hours outside of research trying to uplift other marginalized students. I know more folks whose outreach has nothing to do with promoting diversity or who âdid outreach for a month to get the NSFâ...(2/10)
...(direct quote, by the way) who got the GRFP than I know recipients who have a personal stake in changing the culture of science. Iâm not saying these people donât deserve the NSF-these folks are amazing researchers and often really awesome and kind people! (3/10)
My frustration is with the difference between the way the NSF claims to work and the way it actually works. Roughly 70% of NSF recipients are white. The NSF is NOT a diversity fellowship. The NSF is a MERIT-BASED research fellowship. (4/10)
To be clear, there is nothing illegal, so to speak, about merit-based fellowships on their own. The concept of âmerit-basedâ does inherently uphold white supremacy, but the real issue here is the move to calling merit-based processes âholisticâ, when they are clearly not. (5/10)
Itâs like college applications to UC schools: if the review process was really holistic, we would see a diversity at the undergraduate and graduate level more representative of the general population. The essay is sold as the equalizer, but itâs much more of a...(6/10)
...âI got good grades despite having a serious medical conditionâ situation than the arguably much more common âI got okay grades because I had a serious medical condition and my family couldnât pay for my treatment and we didnât have insurance.â (7/10)
Meanwhile, the CSU system showcases the results of a merit-based admission schema: Cal Poly SLO is the most prestigious CSU and has an extremely white student body. The lower ranked CSUs are much more diverse and are massive vehicles of social mobility (+ great schools!). (8/10)
My point is: donât delude marginalized students for optics. If youâre going to do something on the basis of merit, donât pretend that you care about marginalized students. (9/10)
Disclaimer: I did not get the NSF, nor did I deserve the NSF based on the application I submitted. I am also salty about not getting the NSF, so please take the thread with a grain of salt. (10/10)
