As I explained in the post, I never meant to suggest that my application was rejected primarily because it was coming from Romania. It is clear to me, however, that this was one of the reasons, because I’ve been told that quite explicitly. The stories I shared here are not very detailed because I didn’t want to identify anybody, so I’m in a tricky position where it’s hard for me to provide additional evidence. But let me clarify a few things:
I’m not making the allegation that the EA leadership is discriminating Romania in some evil Machiavellian way (sorry if it seemed like that). I think it’s legitimate to prioritize some countries over others in principle, as long as this is transparent. My guess is that the people in charge of this decision did some calculations and concluded that Romania is not very high priority (which is fair enough), but they’re afraid to be transparent about it because they’re afraid it might be controversial. I personally think this reveals a dangerous pattern of avoiding controversy in EA, a pattern that is not sustainable because it just creates unnecessary drama when things do eventually come out.
The allegation that “Westerners have a bad impression of Romanians” didn’t come from me, and I think this provides extra evidence for the view that EA is reluctant to fund Romania because, if this person was told that the problem was only with me and not at all with Romania, she wouldn’t have made this allegation. I already felt that Romania was not a priority at that point, and they clearly felt something similar if they made this comment.
In any case, I didn’t want to focus so much on my particular story, I am more interested in having a discussion about how EAIF prioritizes countries. Do you think they don’t prioritize countries differently at all? You think there would never be a situation where an application is almost good enough, but the country is too low in priority so it doesn’t get approved?
As I explained in the post, I never meant to suggest that my application was rejected primarily because it was coming from Romania. It is clear to me, however, that this was one of the reasons, because I’ve been told that quite explicitly. The stories I shared here are not very detailed because I didn’t want to identify anybody, so I’m in a tricky position where it’s hard for me to provide additional evidence. But let me clarify a few things:
I’m not making the allegation that the EA leadership is discriminating Romania in some evil Machiavellian way (sorry if it seemed like that). I think it’s legitimate to prioritize some countries over others in principle, as long as this is transparent. My guess is that the people in charge of this decision did some calculations and concluded that Romania is not very high priority (which is fair enough), but they’re afraid to be transparent about it because they’re afraid it might be controversial. I personally think this reveals a dangerous pattern of avoiding controversy in EA, a pattern that is not sustainable because it just creates unnecessary drama when things do eventually come out.
The allegation that “Westerners have a bad impression of Romanians” didn’t come from me, and I think this provides extra evidence for the view that EA is reluctant to fund Romania because, if this person was told that the problem was only with me and not at all with Romania, she wouldn’t have made this allegation. I already felt that Romania was not a priority at that point, and they clearly felt something similar if they made this comment.
In any case, I didn’t want to focus so much on my particular story, I am more interested in having a discussion about how EAIF prioritizes countries. Do you think they don’t prioritize countries differently at all? You think there would never be a situation where an application is almost good enough, but the country is too low in priority so it doesn’t get approved?