About the Program

IDEAL Provostial Fellows for Studies in Race and Ethnicity

Stanford announced in June 2020 a new program to bring early-career scholars of race and ethnicity to the university. This ambitious program, part of the broader Stanford IDEAL initiative, aims to support the work of early-career researchers, who will lead the next generation of scholarship in race and ethnicity and whose work will point the way forward for reshaping race relations in America. 

Each year, a committee of Stanford faculty selects a small cohort of recent PhD recipients, the most promising scholars in their respective disciplines, to be appointed by the provost. Fellowships may be in any university school and are welcomed and supported by faculty mentors and colleagues in their department. The fellowship offers a robust professional development component to advance teaching skills in their research endeavor and prepare fellows to enter the professoriate. The fellows also engage with the intellectual life of the program and the broader university community.  

As reported in October 2020, the program has several goals. These include a short-term goal of increasing the amount of research and teaching related to race and ethnicity at the university and a longer-term goal of enhancing the diversity of the professoriate. Fellows bring new ideas, methodologies, and perspectives that enrich the community of scholars at Stanford, and they organize an annual conference that engages scholars at the forefront of scholarship in the study of race and ethnicity.