Dive Brief:
- The Carnegie Corporation of New York’s new Andrew Carnegie Fellowship Program has granted $6.4 million to a class of 32 inaugural fellows in the humanities and social sciences.
- The Carnegie money is seen as an important investment in fields that have received less attention in the push for science, technology, engineering, and math skills and research, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports.
- The award asks fellows to address “current and future challenges to U.S. democracy and international order,” a broad category that will support research this year in political inequality, nuclear weapons, and racism, according to The Chronicle.
Dive Insight:
Carnegie fellows will get one to two years to focus on research and writing, freeing professors and scholars from teaching responsibilities that can distract from their own work and giving journalists a chance to report and write on a single topic for the duration of the fellowship program. The fellows’ areas of research include big data and privacy, the impact of an aging population, the safety of generic drugs, and how attitudes are formed among voters, according to the Carnegie website. Scholars come from a range of universities, including Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Harvard, Northwestern, and MIT.