Amid University-wide budget cuts and closures of diversity-related programs, the University will sunset the Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence (DARE) Doctoral Fellowship Program by the end of this year. DARE will be replaced with a new program, according to a May statement obtained by The Daily. The statement was sent to faculty and administration by Ken Goodson, the vice provost for graduate education and postdoctoral affairs, and Anika Green, the DARE director and assistant vice provost for graduate education.

DARE was established in 2008 to award two-year fellowships to advanced doctoral students preparing for academic careers “whose presence will help diversify the professoriate,” according to the DARE website from 2015 to February 2025. 

This year’s DARE cohort’s fellowship has been reduced from the typical two-year program to one year. New programs supporting graduate students will be announced in the winter and launch in the fall of 2026, according to Goodson. 

“With the significant shift in the selection process for DARE fellows (item 1), as well as the substantial reduction in general funds to VPGE (item 2), we took the opportunity to ask whether we can learn from the outstanding trajectory of DARE while evolving to new programs that can run on a lower budget while having the maximum positive impact for graduate students,” he wrote. 

Aside from budgetary cuts, the fellowship program is being shut down to comply with the 2023 Supreme Court ruling on race-based affirmative action, according to a statement from Goodson to The Daily.  

DARE defined diversity “broadly” to include “underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities, first-generation college students, women in fields such as natural science and engineering, LGBT students, students with disabilities, and others whose backgrounds and experiences would diversify the professoriate in their academic fields.”

The program, which has supported 374 fellows since its inception, provides financial support and professional development opportunities, including seminars, mentorship with Stanford faculty members, projects and recruiting trips. 

“It was a group of students that was really interested not only in getting to have that support but also learning how to give that support to their future students,” Sarah Jobalia, a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in computer science and current fellow, said. 

The program replacing DARE will support students from all backgrounds who could benefit from similar mentorship and professional development, according to the May email statement. 

According to the statement, changes to federal policy were a major factor in the decision to shut down the program.

“This is a moment that demands strategic thinking across our entire portfolio of graduate support programs, including DARE. The status quo is not an option,” the statement read. 

After the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), which ruled against race-based affirmative action in college admissions, DARE no longer considered race and ethnicity when selecting fellows, according to the statement. 

“While the program still advances diversity in a broad sense, excluding consideration of these elements is a real and significant change in focus,” the statement read. 

The statement also said that federal policy changes have threatened funding across graduate programs and the job market for academia. 

“This moment invites us to ask: how can we take the lessons we have learned from the DARE program over the last 17 years and evolve so that we deploy our resources in alignment with our values and goals to have the maximum positive impact in the current and future environment?” the statement read.  

Goodson and Green wrote that they’re currently working on the new version and might “revisit some of the funding assumptions to ensure that financial support is going to students who need it the most in the current environment.” 

They continued by explaining that the new program could manifest as “full fellowships to a smaller number of students or partial fellowships to a larger number of students,” or as priority support for “students who have lost other sources of funding.”

“What is the university going to replace DARE with in terms of a very tangible, material commitment to diversifying the professoriate?” said Tania Flores, a current fellow and seventh-year Ph.D. candidate in the Iberian and Latin American cultures department. 

“Does the university have plans to not only expand DARE’s programming to all, its professionalization programming to all graduate students, and make it more widely available?” Flores said. “But does it also have plans to maintain this commitment that DARE has represented for so many years?”

The University sent out around 500 emails in May informing DARE alumni, faculty and staff stakeholders and graduate students of the decision. However, the decision has not been announced publicly.

2023-25 DARE fellow and sixth-year Ph.D. candidate Lucas Encarnacion-Rivera became fully aware of the sunset through the DARE farewell ceremony at the end of his fellowship, when Goodson addressed the changes in his speech.

While Encarnacion-Rivera said he and others were disappointed with the decision, he remains optimistic, as he sensed a commitment from the VPGE and DARE directors to replace the program.

“I know that there is a demonstrated commitment for this and I trust in the previous DARE directors and the Vice Provost of Graduate Education to reinvent how they do this in a way that is in compliance with the current administration,” he said.

Sebastian Fernández M.S. ’21, a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in electrical and electronics engineering and 2023-25 DARE fellow, was not surprised that the program was shut down. However, he is disappointed by the lack of effort to maintain aspects of DARE that did not involve University funding, such as mentorship. 

“I know that a lot of people in DARE have research that is deeply embedded in questions of diversity and questions of trying to build a world that is safe and inclusive for everyone,” Jobalia said. “A lot of people were dealing with seeing limits being put on their research, seeing funding being taken away, etc. I think we all were kind of worried about the DARE program.”

For 2023-25 DARE alum and current postdoc in materials science Ana De La Fuente Durán M.S. ’23 Ph.D. ’25, the decision to shut down DARE felt like a “really serious betrayal from the University and the VPGE.” 

She said many fellows felt like the decision was made independently of the desires of students’ and scholars’ desires. The fact that the decision has not been announced publicly shows that the University knows it would experience backlash for the decision, Durán said. 

Fernández said many DARE fellows from underrepresented backgrounds have given DARE credit for preparing them for faculty roles they have taken on. Without DARE, he said that fields like engineering that are lacking representation in traditionally underserved communities will only continue to lack diversity nationwide. 

“Even though there’s only 24 of us in any given year, that’s 24 less potential faculty candidates that can then occupy these slots within the country and further diversify their departments as faculty members,” he said. 

Flores agreed, calling DARE “the single most powerful and effective program that I have had the privilege to be a part of during my time at Stanford,” she said. “I have not experienced another program that provided the same measure and level of financial support, professionalization and holistic support for me and for others as whole individuals.”

Some current and former fellows pushed back on the reasoning behind this decision, connecting it to President Trump’s executive order to terminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.

Jobalia believes that this decision does not exist in a “vacuum of all the things that have been happening on the federal level. It is becoming harder and harder to push for this type of programming and use the type of language that these programs were using. I don’t think that this was a purely budgetary decision,” Jobalia said. 

“My understanding is that [the sunset] is related to pressure from the federal government, that this is not necessarily a financial decision,” Flores said. “If you look at the timing of it, it’s very clear that this was a response to the national climate and to the attacks on Stanford’s peer institutions.”

Many see the fellowship’s sunset as a setback for scholars from underrepresented backgrounds who rely on programs like DARE to bridge the gap between graduate study and faculty careers.

“DARE represents the best of Stanford: academic excellence and a deep passion for serving the communities we belong to,” Skyler St. Pierre, a current fellow and sixth-year Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering, wrote in an email to The Daily. “Gutting the DARE fellowship feels symbolic of Stanford giving up on training its brightest scholars for the professoriate.”