Carnegie Corporation of New York Names 27 Winners of Andrew Carnegie Fellowships
NEW YORK, NY, May 12, 2020 — Carnegie Corporation of New York congratulates the 2020 class of 27 Andrew Carnegie Fellows who were announced today. Each will receive $200,000 in philanthropic support for high-caliber scholarly research in the humanities and social sciences that addresses important and enduring issues confronting our society.
Providing one of the most generous research stipends of its kind, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program was established in 2015. The program represents an overall investment of $38 million in some 200 recipients whose scholarly research spans such subjects as U.S. democracy, the environment, technological and cultural evolution, and international relations. The criteria prioritize the originality and potential impact of a proposal, as well as a scholar’s capacity to communicate the findings with a broad audience.
Among this year’s winning research topics:
• Civic engagement: examining how online town halls with members of Congress can help shape public policy
• Factors driving economic disparities: combining big data as well as in-depth field research that analyzes six vulnerable communities
• Strengthening democratic societies: exploring how women in native communities in the United States conceive of and work toward democratic ideals
• Online radicalization: countering extremism and the spread of disinformation via social media platforms
• Environmentalism: exploring a framework of inherent rights, akin to human rights, that governments could grant to land and natural area
• Climate change: examining the role of religion and theology as a means of bringing faith and science together in mobilizing public support for environmental policies
• America’s precision airstrikes: investigating their impact, including the long-term consequences of collateral damage on civilians
• Humanitarian aid inthe Middle East: understanding when and how programs are effective in ending conflicts or when they unintentionally prolong them
“The pursuit of knowledge and the generation of ideas were critically important to the Corporation’s founder, Andrew Carnegie, whose mission is especially relevant today as our society confronts problems that have been greatly exacerbated by COVID-19,” said Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York and president emeritus of Brown University. “Fellows from earlier classes are actively addressing the coronavirus through their research on topics such as its impact on rural America, government authority during a pandemic, and ways in which different countries address infectious diseases. The work of this exemplary Class of 2020 will also be of service across a range of other crucial issues.”
President Gregorian noted that this year’s 27 fellowships were selected from 322 nominations. The class is made up of 15 women and 12 men. The program seeks to include emerging and established scholars from across the country. In this year’s class, 14 are from public institutions of higher education, 12 are from private colleges or universities, and one is a journalist working with a think tank...