Carnegie Corporation Selects U of A’s Angie Maxwell as 2024 Research Fellow

Carnegie Corporation of New York announced the 2024 Class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows. U of A renowned political scientist Angie Maxwell is one of 28 fellows who will receive stipends of $200,000 each for research that seeks to understand how and why American society has become so polarized and how we can strengthen the forces of cohesion to fortify our democracy.

With this year’s focus, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program marks the start of an effort to develop a body of research around today’s growing political polarization. The Carnegie Corporation will commit up to $6 million annually to the program for at least the next three years, for a total investment of $18 million.

At the U of A, Maxwell holds the Diane Blair Endowed Chair in Southern Studies and is a professor of political science, as well as serving as director of the university’s Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society.

“I am deeply honored to be named a Carnegie Fellow and deeply grateful that the Carnegie Corporation is investing in work that dissects polarization from every possible angle,” Maxwell said. “The polarization of white women is nuanced, yet measurable. It has a complex history and dangerous implications for the future. If we are going to find a way to protect and preserve democracy, we have to get this part right.”

Her winning Carnegie Fellow project is titled The Polarization of White Women in American Politics and is focused on understanding how and why diverging conceptions of womanhood have become a factor in the polarization of white women, especially in the South.

“Congratulations to Dr. Maxwell! This is an impressive and much-needed field of study that she is uniquely positioned to lead,” said Kathryn Sloan, interim dean of the U of A’s Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, which is home to the Department of Political Science and the Blair Center. “Angie is a nationally recognized top expert on the intersection of Southern politics and women, and her powerful research will make an incredible, tangible difference in creating new foundations and inroads for a stronger democracy.”

“The politicization of this divergent notion of ‘womanhood’ muddies our understanding of contemporary polling — the ‘Gender Gap,’ and of pro-life, pro-choice attitudes — and it can swing elections,” Maxwell said. “This project will measure this notion of ‘womanhood’ in real time and trace it to its roots.”

Maxwell is a Truman Scholar who received her Ph.D. in American studies from the University of Texas. Her research and commentary have been featured on MSNBC, NPR and CNN, as well as in the Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the New York Times and in Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s Reconstruction: America After the Civil War on PBS.

Additionally, Maxwell is coauthor of The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics, which was named a Times Higher Education Book of the Week, and author of The Indicted South: Public Criticism, Southern Inferiority, and the Politics of Whiteness, which won the V. O. Key Award for best book on Southern politics. She is also the editor of several books, including The Legacy of Second-Wave Feminism in American Politics.

Dame Louise Richardson, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, said the foundation’s support of projects like Maxwell’s is “a considered effort to mine scholarship for insights into the underlying causes of the political polarization that is damaging our democracy.”

“We also hope to gain insights into the means by which collectively we can mitigate the negative effects of this polarization on our society,” Richardson said.

Additionally, the focus on political polarization attracted more than 360 applications, which Richardson said was a record high for the program.

“I want to congratulate Dr. Maxwell on this tremendous honor,” said U of A Provost Terry Martin. “Her cutting-edge research advances our institution’s research and discovery mission, and this recognition at a national level affirms her work’s important contributions.”

Selection criteria prioritized the originality and promise of the research, its potential impact on the field and the applicant’s plans for communicating the findings to a broad audience. A distinguished panel of jurors composed of current and former leaders from some of the nation’s preeminent institutions made the final selections.

“This year marks the first time the jury was asked to assess proposals addressing a single topic — the pervasive issue of political polarization as characterized by threats to free speech, the decline of civil discourse, disagreement over basic facts and a lack of mutual understanding and collaboration,” said John J. DeGioia, chair of the jury and president of Georgetown University. “We were especially gratified by the rigor of the submissions, the wide range of perspectives and the potential for lasting impact.”

Of the 28 fellows selected this year, 12 are junior scholars, 15 are senior scholars, 11 are employed by state universities, 16 are employed by private universities and one is a journalist.

In addition to Maxwell’s project, other Carnegie research topics include:

• Challenging the assumption that politicians are becoming more extreme, while voters are becoming more moderate
• Investigating the impact of polarization on the public’s trust in government and medicine while finding ways to improve health care overall
• Exploring algorithms that would expose individuals to diverse political opinions and finding low-cost ways to limit the monetization of misinformation
• Evaluating the effectiveness of redistricting reforms to increase electoral competition and decrease geographic partisanship ahead of the 2031 redistricting cycle
• Understanding how election denialism is affecting the work of state and local election workers and how to rebuild trust in the voting process
• Exploring “party misfits,” the 50% of Americans who do not sort easily into Republican or Democratic camps, and the growing gap between voters and political elites
• Examining how attitudes toward the credibility of science shape polarized responses to policies that affect the environment

Visit the Carnegie Corporation of New York online for a full listing of the 2024 Carnegie Fellow Class and their projects.

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, the corporation has named more than 270 fellows, representing a philanthropic investment of more than $54 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 a Nobel Prize and a National Book Award.

The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program is a continuation of the mission of Carnegie Corporation of New York, as founded 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 Carnegie 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 the corporation. Follow the conversation on social media at #CarnegieFellows via Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X (Twitter).