The graduate student workers of the Anthropology department join NUGW in the call for guaranteed sixth year funding.

The requirements of our programs, and the demands of an increasingly competitive job market, cannot be reasonably met in five years. For many in the anthropology department our fieldwork only begins in the fourth year, making completing a high quality dissertation by the end of the fifth year nearly impossible. In addition to program requirements such as language acquisition and coursework, we must also spend considerable time on the professionalization necessary to be viable on the job market - this includes seeking grants, teaching, organizing and presenting at conferences, and publishing our research.

Arbitrarily limiting funding to the fifth year devalues important anthropological research that takes time, patience, and resources to do well. The high quality research of Northwestern graduate workers is not only a social good, it also reflects well on this institution. The reputation of our department, and the university more broadly, depends on the research and teaching of academic workers like us.

We are particularly concerned about the ways that limiting funding the fifth year makes doing research and pursuing a PhD less accessible to international students, parents, and the historically marginalized. For those of us who must support others, cannot depend on financial support from family, and are limited to working on campus, the growing insecurity of post-fifth year funding poses a serious threat to our future in this department and on the job market.

Thus we, the graduate student workers of the Anthropology department, call on the administration of Northwestern University to protect its mission of creating a diverse and socially engaged academy, which produces world class research, by guaranteeing sixth year funding.