The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program marked its fifth year with the announcement of the 2019 class of fellows, comprised of 32 scholars including Opportunity Insights Director Raj Chetty. 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.

“I’m delighted and honored to have been chosen as a recipient of the Carnegie fellowship,” Chetty said. “I intend to use the fellowship to dedicate more time to our team’s work on restoring the American dream at Opportunity Insights, focusing specifically on how we can improve children’s opportunities in communities that currently offer limited prospects for upward income mobility.”

“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 Carnegie Corporation of New York Names 32 Winners of Andrew Carnegie Fellowships 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.