NEW YORK, April 28, 2021 — With the goal of applying scholarly perspectives to some of society’s most important issues, Carnegie Corporation of New York today announced the 2021 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows. The philanthropic foundation will grant each fellow $200,000 to fund significant research and writing in the social sciences and humanities that addresses important and enduring issues confronting our society.
The Corporation launched the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program in 2015 as an initiative that was conceived by the late Vartan Gregorian, who served as president of the foundation from 1997 until his death on April 15, 2021. Gregorian, a former professor of history and past president of Brown University, aimed to advance and elevate the work of the fellows to reinforce the importance of the social sciences and humanities in academia and American life. The program was inspired in part by an early fellowship that Gregorian received that helped catapult his career.
The most generous stipend of its kind, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program has funded a total of 216 scholars, journalists, and authors, representing an investment of $43.2 million. It focuses on subjects such as U.S. democracy, the environment, technological and cultural evolution, and international relations. The criteria prioritize the originality and promise of the research, its potential impact on the field, and the scholar’s plans for communicating the findings to a broad audience.
Among this year’s winning research topics:
Law enforcement: developing tools to analyze policing data, including large volumes of body-worn camera video, to monitor racial bias and suggest evidence-based reforms
Pandemic recovery: studying the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable families and women in the workforce to identify policies that will help rebuild a more just society
Voting access: analyzing strategies to modernize the U.S. electoral system, including mail voting, same-day registration, and calls for a National Accessible Election law
Racial justice: telling the story of mid-19th-century Black New Yorkers who campaigned to desegregate public transit with pioneering civil disobedience strategies
Rural opportunity: exploring the history of agricultural property law and the views of American farmers to develop a more inclusive and sustainable land ownership system
“Me Too” movement: documenting the cultural history of the movement and social media’s ability to expose offenders and hold them accountable
Immigration: exploring the immigration detention system and its multiple, unseen sites within and outside U.S. borders to understand policies and their impact on migrants
Climate change: developing inclusive approaches to climate policy by centering indigenous knowledge cultivated over 2,000 years of human adaption in Madagascar
“The members of the jury will miss Vartan Gregorian — his wisdom, his devotion, and his leadership. He took immense pride in the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program and was deeply involved in every aspect of the process, personally reviewing each nomination that was submitted,” said John J. DeGioia, chair of the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program jury and president of Georgetown University. “Vartan and I agreed that the caliber of the proposals presented by this year’s fellows was exceptional, showing great potential in helping to solve the social, political, and economic challenges facing our world today. These projects fulfill Vartan’s vision of universities, academies, and academic associations playing an essential role in producing critical information and advancing knowledge through scholarship. We are grateful for Vartan’s foresight and are proud to continue his legacy as we congratulate our newest class of fellows.”
Georgetown’s DeGioia, who has been a member of the jury since the start of the program, replaced the founding chair, Susan Hockfield, professor of neuroscience and president emerita of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, Alondra Nelson, president of the Social Science Research Council, stepped down after three years of service on the fellows jury when she was asked to join the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as deputy director for science and society. Today, the jury is comprised of 14 distinguished scholars and academic and intellectual leaders from some of the nation’s most prominent educational institutions, foundations, and scholarly societies.
This year’s class of 26 fellows was selected from 311 nominations. The group is made up of 18 women and eight men, including one transgender person. The program seeks to include emerging (10) and established scholars (16) from across the country, and to represent public institutions of higher education (14) and private colleges or universities (12).
As part of the nomination process, 700 individuals — including heads of independent research institutes, societies, and think tanks; university presidents; directors of major university presses; and editors of leading newspapers and magazines — were invited to recommend up to two individuals. All proposals undergo a preliminary, anonymous evaluation by leading authorities in the relevant fields. The top proposals are then forwarded to the jury for a final review and selection.
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 Class of 2021, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program, the work of past honorees, the criteria for proposals, and a historical timeline of scholarly research supported by the Corporation. Celebrate the Class of 2021 with our social media and press kit, and join the conversation online at #CarnegieFellows and Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Class of 2021
Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat Barnard College, Columbia University
Beth Bailey University of Kansas
Richard Bell University of Maryland, College Park
Deborah A. Boehm University of Nevada, Reno
Kristina Maria Guild Douglass The Pennsylvania State University
Tanisha M. Fazal University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Christine Folch Duke University
Shana Kushner Gadarian Syracuse University
Kali Nicole Gross Emory University
Françoise N. Hamlin Brown University
Adria L. Imada University of California, Irvine
Jeanne-Marie Jackson Johns Hopkins University
Dean Knox University of Pennsylvania
Daniel Laurison Swarthmore College
Sonali Shukla McDermid New York University
Léonce Ndikumana University of Massachusetts Amherst
Jessica A. Shoemaker University of Nebraska College of Law
Stefanie Stantcheva Harvard University
Susan C. Stokes University of Chicago
Neel U. Sukhatme Georgetown University Law Center
Kevin J. A. Thomas The University of Texas at Austin
Salamishah Tillet Rutgers University–Newark
Caroline Tolbert University of Iowa
Jessica Wilkerson West Virginia University
Gillen D’Arcy Wood University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Gabriel Zucman University of California, Berkeley
Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program Jurors
CHAIR: John J. DeGioia President, Georgetown University.
Joseph E. Aoun President, Northeastern University
Jared L. Cohon President Emeritus and University Professor of Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
Robbert Dijkgraaf Director and Leon Levy Professor, Institute for Advanced Study
Jonathan F. Fanton President Emeritus, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Amy Gutmann President, University of Pennsylvania
Rush D. Holt CEO Emeritus, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Alberto Ibargüen President and CEO, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Ira Katznelson Interim Provost and Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University
Arthur Levine President Emeritus, The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
Earl Lewis Founding Director, Center for Social Solutions, University of Michigan; Former President, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Marcia McNutt President, National Academy of Sciences
Louise Richardson Vice-Chancellor, University of Oxford
Pauline Yu President Emerita, 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: education, international peace, and a strong democracy.