$2.45 million grant funds ‘social justice’ internships at Valdosta State University
The grant will support students pursuing ‘social justice’ internships with $5,000 stipends.
One student on campus said that the grant is ‘being used as a recruitment wing for the next generation of leftist radicals.’
Valdosta State University in Georgia is investing $2.45 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support students pursuing “internships focused on social justice.”
Though the university appears to have deleted the original announcement of the grant following Campus Reform’s request for comment, an archived version of the Jan. 27 announcement is still available.
“The Mellon Foundation has awarded Valdosta State University a $2.2 million grant that will provide paid internship opportunities over the next five years for humanities students in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences,” the school announced. “Additionally, VSU Foundation Inc. will raise $250,000 to sustain this initiative beyond the five years, and the Mellon Foundation will provide $250,000 in matching funds for an endowment. That puts the total award from the Mellon Foundation at $2.45 million.”
The grant proposal, “Promoting Social Justice in the Wiregrass through Internships in the Humanities,” awards $5,000 stipends to students involved in “internships focused on social justice.” Dr. Toni Gazda, an associate professor of English and coordinator of Africana Studies, also stated that the grant will support a new “certificate in social justice.”
Valdosta State University has already acquired almost half of the total grant money in December, and the remainder will be given in 2026, reported the university’s student paper The Observer.
Besides funding students in more traditional humanities fields like history and English, the grant money will also support those studying minors such as “Africana Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies,” the school reported.
The grant is “being used as a recruitment wing for the next generation of leftist radicals,” Jeff Davis, a junior, told Campus Reform.
“The disturbing thing here is that Valdosta State is spitting directly in the face of their intellectually diverse population of students, faculty, and organizations ranging from many different walks of life to explicitly embrace programs designed to advance left-wing causes in an area that has been resistant to far-left propaganda,” Davis said.
[RELATED: Google latest company to pull back on DEI, ends diversity hiring goals]
“Given who this grant explicitly benefits and the stated goals, I fail to see this uniting the region around any one principle, but instead causing division,” he added.
The Mellon Foundation began prioritizing its “new focus on social justice” in 2020, following the death of George Floyd. “While Mellon’s strategic shift—under the leadership of Mellon President Elizabeth Alexander— has been two years in the making, current events make the Foundation’s new social justice lens even more relevant to Mellon’s philanthropic efforts supporting the arts and humanities,” the Foundation announced at the time.
Campus Reform has contacted Valdosta State University and the Mellon Foundation for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
