Carnegie Corporation of New York Awards Fellowships to 26 Scholars Researching Political Polarization

The philanthropic foundation’s three-year, $18 million initiative supports interdisciplinary research into the causes of polarization and ways to mitigate it.

Carnegie Corporation of New York announced today the 2025 Class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows. Twenty-six fellows will receive stipends of $200,000 each for research that seeks to understand how and why our society has become so polarized and how we can strengthen the forces of cohesion to fortify our democracy.

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The philanthropic foundation’s three-year, $18 million initiative supports interdisciplinary research into the causes of polarization and ways to mitigate it

Under the leadership of Carnegie president Dame Louise Richardson, the 2025 class marks the second year of the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program’s focus on building a body of research focused on political polarization. Carnegie will commit up to $18 million to this effort over the three-year period.

The winning proposals approach polarization through a wide array of disciplines and methods. Projects include analyzing the causes of the increasing political divides between men and women; assessing where Americans find common ground when it comes to their health; and understanding how partisan media, consultants, and tabloid entertainment industries are driving polarization for short-term profits, among other areas of research.

“Through these fellowships Carnegie is harnessing the unrivaled brainpower of our universities to help us to understand how our society has become so polarized,” said Richardson. “Our future grantmaking will be informed by what we learn from these scholars as we seek to mitigate the pernicious effects of political polarization.”

The focus on political polarization attracted more than 300 applications. A distinguished panel of jurors, chaired by Richardson and comprised of current and former leaders from some of the nation’s preeminent institutions, made the final selections. They prioritized proposals based on the originality and promise of the research, its potential impact on the field, and the applicants’ plans for communicating the findings to a broad audience.

Of the 26 fellows, one is a writer, and the rest are academics, including eight junior scholars and 17 senior scholars. Among them, 16 are employed by public universities and nine are employed by private universities.

The winning research topics include:

• Measuring how political segregation, where an increasing number of voters live in partisan bubbles, is making voters more polarized in their behaviors and attitudes
• Analyzing how ubiquitous exposure to online misogyny — in fringe sites, mainstream social media comment sections, digital gaming chats, and dating strategies — leads to gendered conspiracy theories
• Exploring how architecture, engineering, and construction companies — among the largest revenue-generators in the U.S. — influence urban policies that divide and segregate communities
• Examining how wars meant to create stability abroad bring instability home and how they contribute to domestic radicalization among U.S. veterans
• Investigating how activist investing, where Wall Street investors attack a company and dictate changes in the way that it is run, drives inequality and political polarization by serving the interests of the ultra-wealthy, often to the exclusion of workers, customers, and communities
• Probing how two coal towns, connected by a railroad track, are grappling with America's energy transition differently: Why has one community become radicalized while the other is consciously working against partisanship?
• Assessing why and how environmental issues and protections became partisan and aligned with unrelated issues like abortion and gun control
• Exploring voters’ experiences of casting their vote across the country and how the actual process of voting affects polarized perceptions of the fairness of elections

As part of a competitive nomination process, more than 650 individuals — including the heads of universities, independent research institutes, professional societies, think tanks, major university presses, and leading publications — were invited to recommend scholars for consideration. All applications underwent a preliminary anonymous evaluation by leading authorities in the relevant fields of study. The highest-scoring proposals were then forwarded to the jury.

Founded in 2015, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program provides the most generous stipend of its kind for research in the humanities and social sciences. To date, Carnegie has named almost 300 fellows, representing a philanthropic investment of more than $59 million. The award is for a period of up to two years and the anticipated result is generally a book or major study. Congressional testimony by past fellows has addressed topics such as social media and privacy protections, transnational crime, governmental responses to pandemics, and college affordability. Fellows have received honors including the Nobel Prize and a National Book Award.

The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program is a continuation of the mission of Carnegie Corporation of New York, established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911, to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding. Today the foundation works to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for the issues that our founder considered most important: education, democracy, and peace.

Read more about the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program, the work of past honorees, the criteria for proposals, and a historical timeline of scholarly research supported by Carnegie.

The public may follow the conversation at #CarnegieFellows via Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X (Twitter).

Class of 2025

Adam J. Berinsky Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Fostering an Accurate Information Ecosystem to Mitigate Polarization in the United States

Jacob Brown Boston University

The Behavioral Consequences of Partisan Segregation

Kathryn Cramer Brownell Purdue University–Main Campus

The Enemy Makers: The Industries that Turned American Politics into Open Warfare

Aaron Cayer California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

The Architecture of Polarization: How Our Buildings and Builders Shape our Politics

Barbara Elias Bowdoin College

The Unexpected Home Front: Roots of Domestic Radicalization in U.S. Counterinsurgency Wars

Heba Gowayed CUNY Hunter College and the Graduate Center

The Cost of Borders: Reimagining the World's Most Polarizing Institution

Matt Grossmann Michigan State University

Policymaking for Realists: Bipartisan Progress in a Polarized Age

Jennifer R. Henrichsen Washington State University

Assessing Local Journalism Fellowships to Reduce Political Polarization

Peniel Emmaus Joseph The University of Texas at Austin

The Fire This Time: James Baldwin’s 1963 and America’s Civil Rights Revolution

Nora Kenworthy University of Washington–Bothell

Public Health in Polarized Times: Finding “Islands of Solidarity” for Effective Digital Public Health Campaigns in the U.S.

Brian Kisida University of Missouri

Identifying, Testing, and Promoting K–12 Assessments of Civic Values and Dispositions

Sheelah Kolhatkar The New Yorker

Vulture Capitalist

Yphtach Lelkes University of Pennsylvania

Rethinking Partisan Animosity as Strategic Identity Signaling

Amy E. Lerman University of California, Berkeley

Exploring the Impacts of Deliberative Engagement on Polarization in America

David S. Meyer University of California, Irvine

Against Apocalypse: Protest, Policy, and Polarization

Cynthia Miller-Idriss American University

Cultivating Resilient Democracies: Gendered Divides, Polarization, and Social Cohesion

David Niven University of Cincinnati–Main Campus

Polling Place Obstacles and the Voting Rights Divide

Christopher Sebastian Parker University of California, Santa Barbara

Mobilizing Threat: How Polarization Affects Communities of Color

Jess Reia University of Virginia–Main Campus

Building Bridges and Re-imagining Responses to Fight Anti-Trans Polarization in the U.S.

Jonathan A. Rodden Stanford University

Within-Party Discord and Polarization

Joshua M. Scacco University of South Florida–Main Campus

Diasporas, Public Health, and Political Polarization

Caleb Scoville Tufts University

Divided by Nature: How Environmental Politics Became Partisan and What to Do About It in a Warming World

Jessica M. Smith Colorado School of Mines

Rage and Recovery: Navigating Polarization in the (Other) Coal Country

Steven G. Smith University of Connecticut

These United States, America in the 21st Century

Milan Svolik Yale University

America’s Contested Democratic Creed

Dawn Langan Teele Johns Hopkins University

Battle of the Sexes? The Gender Gap and Partisan Polarization in the United States

Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program Jurors

Sarah Banet-Weiser Walter H. Annenberg Dean, University of Pennsylvania

E.J. Dionne University Professor, McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University, and Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

Jean-Marie Guéhenno Director, Kent Global Leadership Program on Conflict Resolution, and Arnold A. Saltzman Professor of Professional Practice, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

Rush D. Holt CEO Emeritus, American Association for the Advancement of Science

Ira I. Katznelson Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, and Deputy Director, Columbia World Projects, Columbia University

Marcia McNutt President, National Academy of Sciences

Martha Minow 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard University

Alondra Nelson Harold F. Linder Chair, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study

Michael Posner Director, Center for Business and Human Rights; Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance; and Professor of Business and Society, New York University

Dame Louise Richardson (Chair) President, Carnegie Corporation of New York

Pauline Yu President Emeritus, American Council of Learned Societies

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Twenty-six fellows will receive stipends of $200,000 each for research that seeks to understand how and why our society has become so polarized and how we can strengthen the forces of cohesion to fortify our democracy.