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UPDATE: This story was updated at 11:35 a.m. on February 18, 2024.

The Newhouse News Diversity Fellowship webpage is currently empty on the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications’ website, despite the program’s confirmed continuance.

The fellowship is an 18-month program that offers a graduate degree in magazine, news and digital journalism, along with an internship at syracuse.com | The Post-Standard.

In response to a 2023 complaint from the United States Department of Education to the Newhouse Foundation and the Newhouse School, the school is making changes to the fellowship’s website, Newhouse Dean Mark Lodato told The Daily Orange in a Feb. 3 statement.

“The DOE directive included, among other things, making changes to the website. This effort is in progress,” Lodato wrote.

The program isn’t undergoing any other changes, however, Joel Kaplan, associate dean of Newhouse graduate programs, said. Lodato confirmed candidates for the next fellowship cohort are under review. Though the program will remain in place in its current state, involved professors and students emphasized its importance and expressed support for similar programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.

Harriet Brown, Newhouse’s graduate program director for the MND department, said her understanding is that the DOEd’s directive stemmed from the Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision to ban affirmative action.

Newhouse did not provide further comment on the directive’s nature, whether it was connected to the affirmative action ban, or the specific changes to the website.

The fellowship program, which is in partnership with syracuse.com, has existed for more than 30 years, Kaplan said. But Newhouse is in the process of altering the language on its website, Brown said Kaplan told her.

“My understanding is that they’re working on some changes in the wording, but that’s pretty much all I know,” Brown said. “So it’s still a very distressing situation.”

Though the directive was issued in 2023 under former President Joe Biden’s administration, the current website changes come amid President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI crusade. Syracuse University is one of 131 universities that Trump is considering investigating for their diversity practices, WAER reported.

While SU is a private institution, it does receive federal funding — but not for the Newhouse News Diversity Fellowship. The fellowship is a financial partnership between the Newhouse school and syracuse.com, which is owned by Advance Local Media LLC. The Newhouse family owns Advance Local, so the fellowship is essentially funded by the Newhouse Foundation, Brown said.

“I think (taking the website down) suggests that we’re going to censor any mention of diversity. I’m sure this isn’t the only page that’s been suddenly erased from the SU website,” Brown said. “We’re censoring ourselves.”

Brown said she hadn’t heard about the website changes until the page had already been taken down for modification. She first discovered the change on Jan. 31.

“I would hope that we would, as a school of communication and as a journalism department, that we would take a stand and say, ‘We’re not going to do that. We’re not going to censor ourselves,’” Brown said.

Carol Liebler, a Newhouse professor of communications whose research centers around diversity and the media, said it was “extremely troubling” that Newhouse had not been communicative about the situation.

“I would hope that the administration would be more transparent in this situation, and any other similar ones that may arise in the present climate,” Liebler wrote in a statement to The D.O.

Applications for the 2025 fellowship were due in January and faculty are currently reviewing applications, Brown said.

“I mean, if I was applying for a fellowship and suddenly all mention of it disappeared from a website, I’d be pretty nervous,” Brown said.

The current 2024-25 fellows, Ryann Phillips and Ankit Bandyopadhyay, both said the fellowship has provided valuable opportunities for them and they hope future fellows have similar experiences.

Phillips, an undergraduate alumna of Spelman College, first got involved in media as a sophomore when she created a podcast. She later joined neighboring Morehouse College’s student newspaper and learned about the Newhouse fellowship at a college journalism conference. The funding she received from the fellowship was instrumental in her ability to attend Newhouse for graduate school.

“It’s really given me the space to kind of explore all of my passions while doing it in a place where I have funding,” Phillips said.

Like Phillips, Bandyopadhyay said he wouldn’t have been able to attend graduate school without the fellowship’s financial support. An alumnus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Bandyopadhyay said he discovered his passion for print journalism while majoring in communications and was drawn to Newhouse for its reputation in journalism. He said he found the fellowship through its website and from there, connected with Brown.

The two fellows are set to graduate in December, completing the 18-month master’s program and their internships with syracuse.com. Phillips said the fellowship has given her the opportunity to travel to conferences like SXSW and conduct research on media startups.

The fellowship opened up doors for Bandyopadhyay to report on a wide range of local topics, including city infrastructure, Indigenous perspectives on the Erie Canal and a recent immigration naturalization ceremony.

“There’s never a day that goes by where I’m not grateful that I’m in the situation that I’m in and I’m getting the chance to explore so many different opportunities throughout Syracuse and getting to cover so many different aspects in terms of journalism,” Bandyopadhyay said. “I really can’t stress how important and crucial it is to have a program like this, especially for minorities.”

The fellowship has also helped Phillips and Bandyopadhyay foster connections with industry professionals, including alumni from the fellowship. Phillips said the fellowship opened up a network she otherwise wouldn’t have had access to, and she looks forward to building on those relationships as she moves into her career. She and Bandyopadhyay both said they hope future fellows have similarly fruitful experiences.

Phillips said that when it comes to programs aimed to support historically marginalized groups, it’s important to recognize that recipients deserve their admission. DEI programs and policies typically exist to eliminate systemic inequalities. The journalism industry has historically been and remains overwhelmingly white.

As Trump attacks DEI programs nationwide, Phillips said she believes that anyone who has benefited from such programs will continue to push forward and create successful futures for themselves.

“When we think of DEI, we think of it as, like, ‘Oh, these people would not be able to be here without this program,’ but the resume and the skills and everything that’s required to be in certain spaces, they have to match up, even if a person is a part of a DEI program,” Phillips said.

Brown reiterated Phillips’ point.

“It’s not about admission. It’s simply about administering a fellowship,” Brown said. “All of the students who are eligible for the fellowship have already been admitted. It’s not about privileging them in any way.”

Bandyopadhyay said he’s passionate about DEI because he’s seen firsthand the positive impact it has on college campuses. When he first came to SU last spring, he visited the Barner-McDuffie House, a space designed to support the Black student experience, where he recalled feeling welcomed as a student of color.

“Having a place of belonging in colleges is like the best thing a minority has — like a place to express their true emotions, express their true passions,” he said.

Looking forward, Phillips said she hopes the program will continue, as it will contribute to building diverse newsrooms across the country and telling diverse stories. Brown said the timing of the website’s takedown is “very unfortunate” and that the community “has a right to know” SU’s diversity practices are being targeted by the federal government. She looks forward to welcoming the next cohort of Newhouse News Diversity Fellows.

“In Newhouse, they’ve been nothing but supportive to me, and I know they’re going to be supportive to the next generation of minority journalists,” Bandyopadhyay said.

Published on February 18, 2025 at 1:35 am

Contact Stephanie: spwright@syr.edu