Please welcome Kurt Davies and Christian Tanja as my first guests, Episode 1.

Fellowships and internationally competitive awards have historically and presently exercised exclusive practices on and beyond campus. Build on structural meritocracy and white supremacist ideology, the system of internationally recognizable awards, such as the Rhodes and others have made way the some of our nation’s most prominent leaders, including Bill Clinton and Oliver Cromwell Carmichael, known segregationist and president of the University of Alabama from 1953-1957 (Cole, 2020). 

Whether explicitly or implicitly acknowledged, international and prestigious awards provide the space and opportunity to develop and produce industry leaders that are reflective of the values and morals that awards embodies. Often acting as incubators, many of these awards offer holistic and developmental resources that are typically not available to the average student, further enhancing and ensuring award recipients’ success in their field post-award.  With such a large responsibility, the international awards, in the modern-day civil rights era are pressed to confront the historical legacies that they have created or contributed to. And while newer awards have the benefit of learning from mistakes of older awards exclusive practices, we as a body of leaders across the landscape of higher education’s National Awards and Fellowships Association (NAFA) are continuing to reflect and inflect on the relevance and impact on our current methods, practices, policies and systems. 

The critical issues that will be addressed in today’s podcast will focus on the question: How can a selective system built on the inherent value of white-supremacist ideals of prestige and meritocracy be equitable?

Power, Privilege & Prestigious Awards