U. will nominate 20 for new fellowship

Though the current economic downturn has affected nearly all fields, finding academic employment in the humanities is especially difficult. Many universities have temporarily suspended tenure-track job hiring, citing the lagging economy as the primary cause.

“The academic job market has contracted sharply thanks to the recession, so a large number of extraordinarily qualified scholars who would normally find tenure-track teaching jobs will need something else to tide them over for a year or two,” said Gideon Rosen GS ’92, chair of Princeton’s Council of the Humanities and a proponent of Princeton’s participation in the fellowship program. “The fellowships are designed to meet that need.”

Sixty member institutions of the Association of American Universities were invited to participate in the program. To be eligible for the fellowships, a candidate must have received a Ph.D. between January 2008 and December 2009 in either the humanities — such as English, classics and philosophy — or the humanistic social sciences, including history, anthropology, politics and sociology.

A participating institution will be able to nominate between five and 40 candidates for the fellowships, depending on the size of the institution’s Ph.D. program. Princeton expects to nominate around 20 candidates for this year’s fellowships. Final decisions and placements will ultimately be made by the ACLS, Rosen said, and any fellowship winner who does not receive a job offer will be compensated with $35,000.

Funding for the new fellowships will be provided by the Mellon Foundation, a private foundation focused on promoting higher education in the humanities, and the university hosting the fellowship winner.

A university cannot offer its own Ph.D. students one of its fellow positions. As a result, Princeton Ph.D.s will have to look to other Association of American Universities institutions for a fellowship.

“[The new Ph.D.s] get a terrific research and teaching post for a year or two, and this should stand them in good stead when they apply for tenure-track jobs in the future,” Rosen said.

Rosen acknowledged that the creation of 50 two-year fellowships would not turn the tenure-track job market around. Still, he said, it is a good start.

“This is a rather small drop in a large bucket. It may increase by 1 to 2 percent the number of positions available for recent Ph.D.s,” Rosen said. “Still, the benefit to students who receive the fellowships and to the departments that host them will be enormous.”