Benefiting all of society through $6.4 million in philanthropic support for research in the humanities and social sciences.
NEW YORK, NY, April 23, 2019––The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program marked its fifth year with the announcement of the 2019 class of fellows, comprised of 32 scholars. Each recipient of the so-called “Brainy Award” will receive a grant of up to $200,000, making it possible for them to devote significant time to research, writing, and publishing in the humanities and social sciences — work that will benefit all of us.
The program is the most generous initiative of its kind, providing $32 million in grants to more than 160 fellows since 2015. Its overall objective is to offer fresh perspectives on the humanities and solutions to the urgent issues of today.
Among the project topics: how targeted ads interfere with elections; the vulnerabilities caused by human interaction with security and privacy tools; the application of Confucian ethics to the moral problems caused by robots; examining cultural identity and the natural world through the history of the bald eagle; understanding declines in social mobility through large-scale data analyses; the impact of the excessive punishment of black women and girls on our democracy; how universities respond to sexual violence; the development of water insecurity in households; and the lasting environmental impact of the Vietnam War.
“Andrew Carnegie believed in education and understood its influence on the progress of society and mankind. The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program is an integral part of carrying out the mission he set for our organization,” said Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York and president emeritus of Brown University. “Over the past five years, we at Carnegie have been very impressed by the quality, range, and reach of our fellows’ work. This year is no exception. We salute this year’s class and all of the applicants for demonstrating the vitality of American higher education and scholarship.”
Gregorian noted that the fellows program includes a balance of emerging and established scholars from colleges and universities across the country. In this year’s class, 15 of the 32 fellows are from public institutions, including the United States Naval Academy, and half are women.
A distinguished panel of 16 jurors chose the fellows based on the quality, originality, and potential impact of their proposals, as well as each scholar’s capacity to communicate the findings to a broad audience. The jurors are all scholars and intellectual leaders from some of the world’s leading educational institutions, foundations, and scholarly societies — and six are either current or former university presidents.
“For five years, it’s been my honor to chair the insightful panel of jurors who review the outstanding proposals submitted by our forward-thinking nominees, and once again, the candidates showed exceptional diversity of thought and academic rigor,” said Susan Hockfield, chair of the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program jury and president emerita of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I think of the fellows as an investment in our future, and speaking as a neuroscientist, they remind me that science and technology must be accompanied by a broader understanding of the human condition, history, economics, and the many fields of study that form the social sciences and humanities.”
The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program is a continuation of the Corporation's more than 100-year history of promoting the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding by supporting the work of a host of institutions, causes, organizations, and individual scholars.
Each year as part of the nominating process, the heads of more than 600 institutions, representing universities, think tanks, publishers, and nonprofit organizations nationwide, are invited to nominate up to two individuals each for the fellowships. For 2019, the Corporation received a total of 273 nominations. Each underwent a preliminary anonymous evaluation by national experts in the relevant fields. Then, the top proposals were forwarded to the members of the jury for review and the final selection of the class of 2019.
The award is for a period of up to two years and its anticipated result is a book or major study. Read more about the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program, the class of 2019, the work of past honorees, the criteria for proposal, and a historical timeline of scholarly research supported by the Corporation. Celebrate the class of 2019 with our social press kit and join the conversation online at #CarnegieFellows and via Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellows
Elizabeth A. Armstrong University of Michigan
David Autor Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Zainab Bahrani Columbia University
Anne Cafer University of Mississippi
Margaret Carrel University of Iowa
Marcia Chatelain Georgetown University
Raj Chetty Harvard University
William J. Connell Seton Hall University
Melissa L. Cooper Rutgers University–Newark
Zack Cooper Yale University
Lorrie Cranor Carnegie Mellon University
Jack E. Davis University of Florida
John D. Garrigus University of Texas at Arlington
Michael Greenstone University of Chicago
J. Alex Halderman University of Michigan
Thomas M. Keck Syracuse University
Young Mie Kim University of Wisconsin–Madison
Jeff Kosseff United States Naval Academy
Brian K. Kovak Carnegie Mellon University
Sarah Lamb Brandeis University
Michèle Lamont Harvard University
Benjamin Lessing University of Chicago
JeeLoo Liu California State University, Fullerton
Pamela McElwee Rutgers University
Sally A. Nuamah Duke University
Katharine Ricke University of California, San Diego
Stuart Russell University of California, Berkeley
Michael B. Silvers University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Sharece Thrower Vanderbilt University
Hanqin Tian Auburn University
Stewart A. Weaver University of Rochester
Sera L. Young Northwestern University
Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program Jurors
Chair: Susan Hockfield president emerita and professor of neuroscience, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jared L. Cohon president emeritus and university professor of engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
John J. DeGioia president, Georgetown University
Robbert Dijkgraaf director and Leon Levy Professor, Institute for Advanced Study
Jonathan Fanton president emeritus, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Amy Gutmann president, University of Pennsylvania
Rush D. Holt CEO, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Alberto Ibargüen president and CEO, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Ira Katznelson professor of political science and history, Columbia University
Arthur Levine president, The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
Earl Lewis founding director, Center for Social Solutions, University of Michigan; immediate past president, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Marcia McNutt president, National Academy of Sciences
Alondra Nelson president, Social Science Research Council
Don Randel president emeritus, The University of Chicago; president emeritus, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Louise Richardson vice-chancellor, University of Oxford
Pauline Yu president, American Council of Learned Societies
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, education and knowledge, and the strength of our democracy.
