Carnegie Corporation of New York announced the names of 31 Andrew Carnegie Fellows today as the inaugural class of a major annual fellowship program that will provide support for scholars in the social sciences and humanities. Recipients will receive up to $200,000 each, which will enable them to devote between one and two years to research and writing.
The Andrew Carnegie Fellows are an exceptional group of established and emerging scholars, journalists, and authors whose work distills knowledge, enriches our culture, and equips leaders in the realms of science, law, business, public policy, and the arts. The fellowships aim to provide new perspectives on the program’s overarching theme for 2015: Current and Future Challenges to U.S. Democracy and International Order. Winning proposals address issues including policing and race, big data and privacy, the impact of an aging population, the safety of generic drugs, and how attitudes are formed among voters. The Corporation will award a total of $6.4 million to the inaugural class.
“It is my hope that the work of the Andrew Carnegie Fellows will help inform the American public as well as policy makers,” said Vartan Gregorian, President of Carnegie Corporation.
He added, “What distinguishes this initiative is, above all, its extraordinary jury. The selection committee includes the heads of some of the nation’s preeminent institutions dedicated to the advancement of knowledge, including five current and former university presidents. In addition, each proposal was reviewed and rated by at least one of the 25 prominent scholars, educators, and intellectuals who served as anonymous evaluators.”
In launching the fellowship program, the Corporation sought nominations from nearly 700 leaders from a range of universities, think tanks, publishers, independent scholars, and non-profit organizations nationwide, who collectively nominated more than 300 people.
“What impressed me most was the quality of the proposals—they seek to tackle some of the most pressing issues of our times with innovative and forward-looking ideas from a wide range of high-caliber candidates,” said Susan Hockfield, MIT President Emerita, who chaired the panel of jurors. “Solutions to the complex issues of today and tomorrow will not emerge simply through technology and science, but require humanistic and social science scholarship to use lessons of the past to devise paths to future peace and progress.”
The jurors were asked to consider the merits of each proposal based on its originality, promise, and potential impact on a particular field of scholarship. The anticipated result of each fellowship is a book or major study.
2015 ANDREW CARNEGIE FELLOWS
Alessandro Acquisti, Carnegie Mellon University
Larry M. Bartels, Vanderbilt University
Shahzad Bashir, Stanford University
David E. Bloom, Harvard University
Kevin Gerard Boyle, Northwestern University
Fotini Christia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
John D. Ciorciari, University of Michigan
Gregory T. Cushman, University of Kansas
Katherine Eban, Journalist
Caleb Everett, University of Miami
Masha Gessen, Journalist
Mala Htun, University of New Mexico
Valerie M. Hudson, Texas A&M University
Maria Ivanova, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Keir A. Lieber, Georgetown University
Arthur Lupia, University of Michigan
Sarah Mathew, Arizona State University
Ian Morris, Stanford University
Leith Mullings, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Laurence Ralph, Harvard University
Louise I. Shelley, George Mason University
Timothy David Snyder, Yale University
Thomas J. Sugrue, New York University
Patricia L. Sullivan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Philip E. Tetlock, University of Pennsylvania
Elizabeth F. Thompson, University of Virginia
Daniel J. Tichenor, University of Oregon
Zeynep Tufekci, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Lynn Vavreck, University of California, Los Angeles
Max Weiss, Princeton University
Elizabeth J. Wilson, University of Minnesota
Selection Jury:
Chair: Susan Hockfield, President Emerita, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ralph Cicerone, President, National Academy of Sciences
Jared Cohon, President Emeritus, Carnegie Mellon University
Mary Sue Coleman, President Emerita, University of Michigan
John DeGioia, President, Georgetown University
Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor, Institute for Advanced Study
Jonathan Fanton, President, American Academy of Arts & Sciences; president emeritus, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Amy Gutmann, President, University of Pennsylvania
Ira Katznelson, President, Social Science Research Council
Earl Lewis, President, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Don Randel, chair of the board, American Academy of Arts & Sciences and President Emeritus, The University of Chicago and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Robert Silvers, Editor, The New York Review of Books
Pauline Yu, President, American Council of Learned Societies
Rapporteur: Arthur Levine, President, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
Throughout its more than 100-year history, Carnegie Corporation has supported many individual scholars and their research. In the 1930s, Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma had a significant impact on race relations and was influential in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Corporation funded the early works of major scholars such as Robert Caro, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Power Broker, as well as Martin Feldstein and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. More recently, between 2000 and 2009, the Corporation supported the Carnegie Scholars program, which awarded 168 fellowships to scholars in a broad range of disciplines, including 117 scholars with expertise on the challenges facing Islam and the Muslim world. Many of these scholars are now among the top experts in their respective fields.
Read more about the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program and the work of the 2015 inaugural class by visiting acfellows.carnegie.org and following news about the fellows at #CarnegieFellows.
About Carnegie Corporation of New York
Carnegie Corporation of New York was established in 1911 by Andrew Carnegie to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding. In keeping with this mandate, the Corporation's work focuses on the issues that Andrew Carnegie considered of paramount importance: international peace, the advancement of education and knowledge, and the strength of our democracy.