Three Black Scholars Named MacArthur Fellows

macarthur-fellows-thumbThe Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation has announced the selection of 24 individuals in this year’s class of MacArthur Fellows. The honors, frequently referred to as the “Genius Awards,” include a $625,000 stipend over the next five years which the individuals can use as they see fit. Fellows are chosen for their “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits.” The goal of the awards is to “encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations” without the burden of having to worry about their financial situation.

Of this year’s 24 MacArthur Fellows, three are African Americans with ties to the academic world.

AwuahPatrick Awuah is the founder and president of Ashesi University in Ghana. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. He worked as a software engineer fro Microsoft Inc. before returning to Ghana to establish Ashesi University. Awuah is a member of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the African Leadership Initiative of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

CoatesTa-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine. He has served as a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Management. Coates, who attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., is the author of The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir (Spiegel & Grau, 2008) and Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015).

FrazierLaToya Ruby Frazier is an assistant professor of photography in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her collection of black-and-white photographs of the steel town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, was published in the book The Notion of Family (Aperture, 2014). Frazier is a graduate of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and holds a master of fine arts degree from Syracuse University.

Related Articles

2 COMMENTS

  1. Wonderful and congratulations. I trust the accomplishments of these three will inspire others all around the Black Atlantic. I was really happy to see that Awuah’s dream has come to fruition and continues to attract support. Love Ta-Nehishi’s writings will track down The Notion of Family to enjoy Frazier’s work. These three awardees do allow us to see the ways family exists an persists in the diaspora

  2. Congratulations Ta-Nehisi Coates! I was so moved by ‘Between the World and Me’ that I read it three times. Every African American male should read it! Both of my sons have copies. Thank you for writing such an important book!

Leave a Reply

Get the JBHE Weekly Bulletin

Receive our weekly email newsletter delivered to your inbox

Latest News

Online Articles That May Be of Interest to JBHE Readers

Each week, JBHE will provide links to online articles that may be of interest to our readers. Here are this week’s selections.

AAUP Urges Institutions to Fund, Protect, and Publicize DEI Initiatives in Academia

The AAUP urges academic institutions to recruit and retain diverse faculty and student bodies and to "fund, protect, and publicize research in all fields that contributes to the common good and responds more widely to the needs of a diverse public."

In Memoriam: Ralphenia D. Pace

A scholar of food and nutritional sciences, Dr. Pace taught at Tuskegee University in Alabama for more than 40 years.

Black Matriculants Are Down at U.S. Medical Schools

In 2024, the share of Black applicants to U.S. medical schools increased by 2.8 percent from 2023. However, the share of Black medical school matriculants decreased by 11.6 percent. Notably, there has been year-over-year progress in overall Black medical school representation, which has risen to from 7.9 percent in 2017 to 10.3 percent in 2024.

Featured Jobs