Even though some dictionaries OK it, the verb
to privilege is currently
used only in a particular English subdialect that might be called
academese. Example:
The patriarchal Western canon privileges univocal
discourse situated within established contexts over the polyphonic free
play of decentered utterance. (Yes: it's often that ghastly.)
Contemporary academese originated in literary and social theory but has
now metastasized throughout much of the humanities. There is exactly one
rhetorical situation in which you'd want to use
to privilege,
to
situate, or
to interrogate + some abstract noun phrase, or pretty much any transitivized-verb construction that's three times longer than it
needs to be -- this is in a university course taught by a professor so
thoroughly cloistered, insecure, or stupid as to believe that academese
constitutes intelligent writing. A required course, one that you can't
switch out of. In any other situation, run very fast the other way.
-- David Foster Wallace. Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus,
"Word Note" under the entry for the word "privilege."