SSN Scholars Win New Carnegie Fellowships

Three SSN members – Mala Htun, Patricia Sullivan, and Daniel Tichenor – are among 32 scholars just named as inaugural Andrew Carnegie Fellows. Each will receive a grant of $200,000 from the Carnegie Corporation to pursue a major study relevant to the 2015 theme: work addressing Current and Future Challenges to U.S. Democracy and International Order. 

This prestigious new program supports fellows as they devote between one and two years to research and writing. By the end of this time period, fellows are expected to have produced a book or major study. To launch the fellowships, the Carnegie Corporation sought input from nearly 700 leaders from a range of universities, think tanks, publishers, independent scholars, and non-profit organizations nationwide, who collectively nominated more than 300 people. The nominees’ proposals were chosen based on the originality, promise, and potential impact on a particular field of scholarship.

The Scholars Strategy Network is thrilled that three of our members have been selected to receive this honor, enabling them to produce additional important research to address the public good.

Mala Htun is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of New Mexico. Her work focuses on how states create and limit social inequalities along lines of gender, race, and ethnicity. She has held the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in Japan, and was a fellow at the Kellogg Institute of the University of Notre Dame and the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard. Her SSN brief, “Why Autonomous Social Movement Hold the Key to Reducing Violence against Women,” explores why some countries and not others adopt policies that effectively mitigate violence against their female citizens. Autonomous feminist organizations, Htun shows, are crucial to spurring government action.

Patricia L. Sullivan is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has explored the utility and limitations of deploying military force and providing foreign military assistance. In addition, she has written about factors that lower the odds that international conflicts will escalate to violence, and probed the impact of U.S. military aid on other countries’ behavior toward the United States. Her brief entitled “Is Military Aid an Effective Tool for U.S. Foreign Policy” questions the assumption that military aid increases U.S. influence or encourages cooperation by recipient countries.

Daniel J. Tichenor, the Philip H. Knight Professor of Social Science at the University of Oregon, does research on U.S. immigration politics and policy as well as on presidential power and its relationship to democratic government, civil liberties, and civil rights. His recent scholarship and current book in progress, Democracy’s Shadow, track unauthorized immigration as a persistent American political dilemma. Tichenor’s brief, “Why America’s Immigration Politics is So Contentious and Focused on Making Unlikely Grand Bargains,” highlights how recurrent tensions between progressives and conservatives about the basic goals of immigration policy make for cumbersome and often unsatisfying legal attempts at “immigration reform.”