The Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund provides grants to students actively working for peace and justice. These need-based scholarships are awarded to those able to do academic work at the university level and who are part of the progressive movement on the campus and in the community. Early recipients worked for civil rights, against McCarthyism, and for peace in Vietnam. Recent grantees have been active in the struggle against racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression; building the movement for economic justice; and creating peace through international anti-imperialist solidarity.
The Fund was founded in 1961 as the Marian Davis Scholarship Fund, a memorial to a teacher and political activist who died of breast cancer in 1960. Marian was an advocate for racial justice and the rights of labor. While raising her family, she was also at home in the classroom, on the picket line, or in a jail cell.
Specific Eligibility Criteria
The first and most important qualification for a Davis-Putter Scholarship is active participation in struggles for civil rights, economic justice, international solidarity or other progressive issues.
They also evaluate the applicant’s financial need and ability to perform academically at the college level. Davis-Putter scholars are both graduate and undergraduate students and must be enrolled in an accredited school and receiving college credit for the time period covered by their grant. Completed applications must be postmarked by April 1 and will include a short personal statement, transcripts, letters of support from two people able to evaluate the applicant’s current political work, an official financial statement (i.e., FAFSA or SAR), and a passport-like photograph suitable for reproduction. Although citizenship is not a consideration, applicants must be living in the United States and planning to enroll in school in the US in order to apply. There is a strong preference for grantees who plan on staying in the US and building the movement here.