ELEVEN “SCHOLARS OF VISION” AWARDED $1.1 MILLION BY CARNEGIE CORPORATION OF NEW YORK
Scholars Chosen for Innovative Scholarship in Education, International Development, Strengthening U.S. Democracy and International Peace and Security
Carnegie Corporation of New York has selected 11 leading researchers at American universities and colleges for this year's class of Carnegie Scholars. They join 28 others awarded fellowships since 2000. Each of the scholars, chosen in a highly competitive process, will receive up to $100,000, for one to two years to pursue subjects advancing the strategic work of the Corporation. This third class of Carnegie Scholars will explore issues critical to civil society and terrorism, multicultural challenge in liberal democracies, ethnic conflict in Europe, race in American life, representative democracy, comparative development, constitutional configurations of the past, color-blind affirmative action, the sociology of military strategy and threat assessment, and the history of foreign aid.
“We want to encourage and support original and creative scholars working on a wide array of social issues who are linked together by their individual commitments to discovering and advancing knowledge and to improving society,” said Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York. Gregorian inaugurated the Scholars Program in 1999 to renew and invigorate the Corporation’s commitment to encourage innovative individuals who are engaged in promising scholarship that extends the boundaries of the Corporation’s program areas. “We believe that excellent scholarship is a prerequisite for solid policy research and, ultimately, social change.”
The 11 Carnegie Scholars of 2002 represent both promising and recognized scholars. “Because we understand that successful innovation may come from either reliable sources or yet-untapped talent, we wanted our search process to identify both established and emerging experts in the relevant fields,” said Gregorian.
The 11 Carnegie Scholars, their institutions and research titles are:
David B. Edwards, Williams College
“Civil Society and Terrorism in Afghanistan”
Erin K. Jenne, Harvard University
“Europe’s Long Struggle with Ethnic Conflict: From the League of Nations to the European Union”
Carol Lancaster, Georgetown University
“Fifty Years of Foreign Aid: An Analytical History”
Glenn Cartman Loury, Boston University
“Color-Blind Affirmative Action: Assessing the Trade-off between Efficiency and Representativeness in College Admissions in a World Without Racial Preferences”
Uday S. Mehta, Amherst College
“Constitutional Configurations of the Past: A Comparative Study of India, Israel, South Africa, and the U.S.”
Rajan Menon, Lehigh University
“Islam and the Politics, Foreign Policy, and National Security of the Russian Federation”
Sharyn O’Halloran, Columbia University
“More than the License Plates: Majority-Minority Voting Districts and Representative Democracy”
Adolph Reed, Jr., New School University
“Race in American Life: What It Is, What It Isn’t/How It Works, How It Doesn’t”
James A. Robinson, University of California at Berkeley
“Understanding the Institutional Determinants of Comparative Development”
Ian Roxborough, State University of New York, Stony Brook
“Diagnosing New Dangers: A Sociology of Military Strategy and Threat Assessment”
Richard A. Shweder, University of Chicago
“When Cultures Collide: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies”
Project descriptions for each scholar are attached to this release.
The Corporation names up to 20 Carnegie Scholars annually. Fellowships are awarded for a period of one to two years, depending upon the nature and design of the research. The maximum amount of the award is $100,000. At the end of each fellowship, Carnegie Scholars will submit written reports to the Corporation, which may then assist in disseminating those results.
Scholars program candidates are identified by nominators and then evaluated by committees including both Carnegie Corporation program leaders and external advisors. Nominators for the current class included college and university presidents, professors, provosts, vice presidents for research and heads of research institutes from universities and liberal arts colleges, as well as a broad mix from non-academic institutions. “Criteria for selection were based on stringent academic standards and the relevance of the project to Corporation program priorities,” said Neil Grabois, vice president and director for strategic planning and program coordination at Carnegie Corporation of New York, who facilitated the various levels of deliberations. From an initial group of 100 nominees, 32 were invited to provide complete project descriptions. Eleven finalists were approved by the president and presented to Carnegie Corporation’s board of trustees.
Patricia Rosenfield, chair of Carnegie Corporation’s Scholars Program and special advisor to the vice president and director for strategic planning and program coordination, noted that, “This new group of scholars is a strong collection of extraordinarily creative individuals. We hope the awards will provide them with new freedom and opportunity to use their imaginations and arrive at fresh ideas that can advance social issues.”
Carnegie Corporation of New York was created by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to promote "the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding." As a grantmaking foundation, the Corporation seeks to carry out Carnegie's vision of philanthropy, which he said should aim "to do real and permanent good in the world." The Corporation's capital fund, originally donated at a value of about $135 million, had a market value of $1.7 billion on September 30, 2001. The Corporation awards grants totaling approximately $75 million a year in the areas of education, international peace and security, international development and strengthening U.S. democracy.
2002 SCHOLARS PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS
DAVID B. EDWARDS
Professor of Anthropology
Department of Anthropology and Sociology
Williams College
Williamstown, Massachusetts
"Civil Society and Terrorism in Afghanistan"
Edwards, an anthropologist studying 20th and 21st century Afghanistan, will examine the breakdown of civil society in Afghanistan and the parallel expansion of Al-Qaeda bases that have become infamous recently for their association with international terrorist activities. His goal is to illuminate the social, political and economic transformations inside Afghanistan that made it possible for Al-Qaeda to establish a base of operations and to understand the role of foreign powers in bringing these transformations about. Edwards will base his study on an extensive archive of videotapes, photographs, audiotapes and reporters’ notes compiled by Afghan journalists covering all aspects of Afghan society and politics during and immediately after the Soviet occupation. He hopes to use his research to produce a website, a documentary film and a book which details and analyzes the consequences of party indoctrination and control, foreign occupation, the proliferation of weapons and protracted conflict on Afghan society.
ERIN K. JENNE
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and WPF Program on Intra-State Conflict
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
“Europe’s Long Struggle with Ethnic Conflict: From the League of Nations to the European Union”
Jenne, a post-doctoral fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, is asking the question, How do third parties intervene to protect minorities without encouraging minority rebellion or exacerbating ethnic strife? She says that while history offers insights into this question, most of the solutions considered for today’s ethnic conflicts—ethnic partition, territorial autonomy, outside intervention and external inducements—have already been employed in the inter-war period (the period between World War I and World War II). She proposes to reexamine this history in order to learn which instruments are likely to be most effective in resolving conflicts today. The results of this study will be distilled into a book on how today’s policymakers can learn from the mistakes of the League of Nations to create a regime that promotes peace and tolerance in Europe and elsewhere around the world.
CAROL LANCASTER
Associate Professor and Director
Master of Science in Foreign Service Program
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.
“Fifty Years of Foreign Aid: An Analytical History”
Lancaster, an accomplished scholar and public servant working on foreign aid issues, will use her fellowship money to research and write a book entitled Fifty Years of Foreign Aid: An Analytical History. The book will be a narrative and analysis of the evolution and impact of “foreign economic assistance” or “foreign aid” from major donor governments over the past fifty years. It will build on her considerable experience and scholarly expertise to provide the first broad evaluation of why foreign aid became such a prominent innovation in statecraft in the second half of the 20th century, what impact it has had and how it is likely to evolve in the 21st century. Drawing on the concepts of political and social science, Lancaster will attempt to answer two fundamental questions in the book: Why did various governments provide aid? And what impact did the aid have?
GLENN CARTMAN LOURY
Professor of Economics and
Director of The Institute on Race and Social Division
Boston University
Boston, Massachusetts
“Color-Blind Affirmative Action: Assessing the Trade-off between Efficiency and Representativeness in College Admissions in a World Without Racial Preferences”
Loury, a distinguished scholar, well-known for his work on the applications of economic theory to public policy issues involving race, proposes to produce a methodology for quantitatively assessing how the elimination of explicit racial preferences in college admissions can be expected to affect student selection processes at institutions where racial diversity continues to be sought. The method he hopes to develop takes advantage of the fact that a number of non-academic, non-racial criteria already exist which can be used to sort applicants, and which are distributed quite differently within different racial groups. Many of these criteria (geographic location, area of intellectual interest, non-academic life experience, social class) are already employed by many colleges and universities in the selection process. He will publish the results of his inquiry in a book that would make his research more broadly available for other areas of selection policy, such as business contracting and employment, where the explicit use of race is being contested.
UDAY S. MEHTA
Professor
Department of Political Science
Amherst College
Amherst, MA
“Constitutional Configurations of the Past: A Comparative Study of India, Israel, South Africa, and the U.S.”
Mehta, an acclaimed political theorist, will study how constitutions configure the relationship between the past of a country and its imagined future. He will focus on the constitutional orientations, the democratic opportunities and the public policies regarding minority groups in India, Israel, South Africa and the United States. With his work on the African-American community in the U.S. substantially complete, Mehta will conduct case studies of religious, caste and regional minorities in India as they struggle for political and social recognition; of white and “coloured” minorities in the new South Africa; and diverse ethnic and religious minorities within the quasi-constitutional arrangements in Israel. His project will provide insights into the question of constitutional design as it concerns equality and recognition in contemporary politics.
RAJAN MENON
Monroe J. Rathone Professor of International Relations
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
“Islam and the Politics, Foreign Policy, and National Security of the Russian Federation”
Menon seeks to explore how Islam in its diverse forms and manifestations could shape Russia’s political order, the means and ends of its foreign policy and the formulation and implementation of its national security strategy. He will focus on the major Islamic zones within Russia (the north Caucasus, Bashkortostan and Tatarstan) and on Russia’s policies toward Central Asia and the South Caucasus’s neighboring regions where the role of Islamic politics is particularly evident. His project will investigate some of the following questions: Do Russians reduce Islam in politics to fundamentalism, or is there a richer and more complex understanding taking root among them?; What are the practical consequences of the ways in which Islam’s national security significance is understood in Russia?; And how much attention has the Russian military paid to Islam’s political role? Through his research, Menon hopes to provide a fuller, more complex appreciation of Islam and politics in Russia.
SHARYN O’HALLORAN
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
Columbia University
New York, New York
“More than the License Plates: Majority-Minority Voting Districts and Representative Democracy”
O’Halloran’s project will explore how alternative districting strategies can impact the ability of minority groups to affect the passage of legislation at both the national and state levels by looking at not only who gets elected, but also how these legislators act once in office. She will start by examining the impact of majority-minority districts on citizens’ connection to the democratic process at all levels: in the voting booth, in relations with their representative and in the final policies passed by government. She will then link these findings to the current political and legal debates over districting: how can the experiences of the past decade be reconciled with Supreme Court doctrine on voting rights to produce a fair and effective system of districting and representation? She will compile her findings into a book and several articles that address the impact of districting on the representation of minority interests in national and state legislatures.
ADOLPH L. REED, JR.
Professor
Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science
New School University
New York, New York
“Race in American Life: What It Is, What It Isn’t/How It Works, How It Doesn’t”
Reed, an expert on race and the construction of racial identities, will provide an account of race’s role in American life. Working at the intersection of the new demography of labor and the emerging politics of race, he will examine the role of institutional relations in shaping pragmatic understandings of race and racial difference as they evolved in the United States over the 20th century. His study will reconstruct the dynamics of political and social relations through which racial ideologies and common beliefs of racial difference have taken shape in order to clarify and demystify the idea of race in contemporary life.
JAMES ROBINSON
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California
“Understanding the Institutional Determinants of Comparative Development”
Robinson, a political scientist, seeks to answer the question, Why are some countries rich while others are not? He believes that the reasons arise from differences in the way society organizes institutions. He will travel to Botswana, Colombia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana and Mauritius to investigate several key issues such as, What are the important connections between institutions and economic outcomes? Why do different countries have different institutions? Why do institutions that impede development persist when they cause such vast social and human losses? By providing explanations of the institutional determinants of under-development, his research will provide the basis for improved policy advice.
IAN ROXBOROUGH
Professor
Department of Sociology
State University of New York
Stony Brook, New York
“Diagnosing New Dangers: A Sociology of Military Strategy and Threat Assessment”
Roxborough’s project is a study of the organizational and cultural constraints on the development of U.S. military strategy in the aftermath of the Cold War. Based on interviews and documentary analysis, he will examine how the various component parts of the Department of Defense have redefined their organizational interests since the end of the Cold War. He will look at why the process of defining strategy has been so slow and contentious and how the process of strategy be can be improved. Using concepts and methods from psychology and sociology, he will provide a full account of the complicated dynamics involved in the formulation of U.S. military strategy. From this research, he will suggest ways to improve the process of developing a military strategy. He will write two books—one addressing the “who” and “what” questions from the perspective of military strategists, e.g., Who will be America’s enemy?; the second will address the “how” question, examining military debates about new weapons systems, new doctrine and new organizational arrangements to conduct military options.
RICHARD SHWEDER
Professor of Human Development
University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
“When Cultures Collide: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies”
Shweder, a leading anthropologist, aims to develop an account of the scope and limits of toleration for cultural variety in the United States. He proposes to write a book addressing several normative and empirical aspects of the question, “How much cultural diversity is possible within the confines of a liberal democracy such as the United States of America?” By conducting a study of Islamic immigrants and their families in Chicago, which has one of the largest concentrations of Muslims in the United States, and analyzing contemporary and historical cases where cultures have collided in U.S. courts, Shweder will address how a liberal democracy does and should respond to cultural differences.