A Northwestern history professor was included in the inaugural 32-person class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows, chosen from more than 300 nominations.

History Prof. Kevin Boyle will receive up to $200,000 to support a research sabbatical to write a book about post-9/11 America.
Boyle expressed his appreciation for the recognition and grant.

“I’m so grateful to the Carnegie Corporation for its generous support,” Boyle said in a news release. “I hope the book will speak to the deeply troubling issues the nation faces as we live through our own age of terror.”

Boyle teaches classes at NU on contemporary U.S. history, the civil rights movement and racial violence.

Boyle’s 2004 book, “Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age,” received the National Book Award for nonfiction and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Some of Boyle’s essays and reviews have been published by The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation, said the people who picked the fellowship winners are extraordinary.

“The selection committee includes the heads of some of the nation’s preeminent institutions dedicated to the advancement of knowledge, including five current and former university presidents,” Gregorian said in the release. “Each proposal was reviewed and rated by at least one of the 25 prominent scholars, educators and intellectuals who served as anonymous evaluators.”

All 32 of the fellows will receive funding for studies in the social sciences and humanities, totaling $6.4 million.

Susan Hockfield, president emerita of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, chaired the panel of judges. She said the humanities and social sciences play a key role in solving today’s problems.

“What impressed me most was the quality of the proposals — they seek to tackle some of the most pressing issues of our times with innovative and forward-looking ideas from a wide range of high-caliber candidates,” she said in the release. “Solutions to the complex issues of today and tomorrow will not emerge simply through technology and science, but require humanistic and social science scholarship to use lessons of the past to devise paths to future peace and progress.”

Gregorian said he hoped the money will help the fellows to inform both policymakers and the general public.

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