scribes a proposal that some thought was methodologically unso-
phisticated, yet that also seemed somehow grand and highly ambi-
tious. The “fight,” he explains, turned on whether the topic was
sufficiently enticing to overcome the proposal’s many other flaws.
It was an absolutely wonderful idea and the people who liked it, at
least some of them, were swayed by the idea...Butwhenyouap-
plied the criteria we often use for proposals to this one, it failed,
and it failed miserably. The fight was about do we overlook these
criteria or not because we like the topic so much. I couldn’t help
but think there was, like, some sets of extrinsic things going on
too, like personalities, and there was a political, or ideological [di-
mension]...This applicant...wasakind of anti-globalization
lefty who was pretty naive about testing, assuming those assump-
tions are true and then running with them in the proposal as op-
posed to trying to defend any of them...Hissupporterswould
go, “This is a cultural history, and that’s really interesting, so...”
But the proposal actually says, “I’m going to do a social and eco-
nomic history...andtestwhether or not it supported America’s
hegemonic ambition.” So [the economist] quite rightly said,
“Well, I don’t think he has a clue about how to go about doing
that”... [Proposals often] fail on those grounds...aperson
states he’s going to do something and you take it on face value.
The supporters were going, “Well, no, he didn’t really mean that,”
and [it] seemed to me, you can’t really [do that].Although the proposal was not funded, this panelist voices his
concern that standard rules were not applied during deliberation.
Later in the interview, he hints at a possible failure in the legitimacy
of the decision process when he wonders whether the panel chair
had some reason for wanting the project funded. Another panelist,
on a different panel, shares a similar concern over legitimacy. He
Pragmatic Fairness / 143