MacArthur Foundation Announces 2024 ‘Genius’ Grant Winners

On Tuesday, 22 anonymously nominated Americans were recognized with fellowships and an $800,000 stipend.

While the groundbreaking Indigenous teen comedy-drama “Reservation Dogs” may not have taken home any Emmys this year, the show’s co-creator Sterlin Harjo has been awarded a different prestigious prize: a MacArthur Fellowship.

“The dreams that I had when I was young about changing the world and about changing representation and about showing us as real human beings, all of that meant something, and it did change the world,” Harjo said in an interview. He also co-wrote the new Netflix film “Rez Ball,” and has directed films, including “Love and Fury” and “Mekko.”

Harjo, 44, is part of a new class of 22 MacArthur Fellows that includes a children’s and young adult author, a former U.S. poet laureate, two evolutionary biologists, an astronomer who uplifts underrepresented students and a pioneering alternative cabaret star.

The honor is given out each year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, recognizing individuals in a variety of fields. The fellowship comes with a no-strings-attached stipend of $800,000, disbursed over five years.

The fellows, who were announced on Tuesday, were first submitted for consideration by a pool of anonymous nominators and then recommended to the foundation’s president and board by an independent selection committee. Since 1981, more than 1,100 people have been awarded the fellowship, which is commonly referred to as the “genius grant.”

Recipients are not notified if they are being considered for the honor, so their selection comes as a surprise. This year, multiple fellows were told that the MacArthur Foundation wanted them to participate in a panel discussion, and would be calling them to organize the event. But when the call came, they were instead notified that they had been chosen as a fellow (and that the panel did not even exist).

Justin Vivian Bond, a star of alternative cabaret who first rose to fame as half of the duo Kiki and Herb, was driving a friend to the train station when they were bombarded with calls from an unknown number. Bond finally answered “with a very icy hello” — and learned they were selected.

“I didn’t really expect it would ever happen to me, because I’m primarily a cabaret singer and I’d never seen anybody who was a cabaret singer win that before,” Bond said.

Fellows work in a variety of creative and intellectual fields. This year’s class includes the author Ling Ma, who wrote the books “Severance” and “Bliss Montage”; the disability justice activist Alice Wong; and the dancer and choreographer Shamel Pitts, who founded and leads the multidisciplinary artist collective Tribe.

The youngest fellows, at 39, are Pitts; Loka Ashwood, a University of Kentucky sociologist focused on identity and challenges in rural communities; and Martha Muñoz, a Yale University biologist investigating why evolution happens at different rates. The oldest fellow is the 75-year-old former U.S. poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, a frequent chronicler of Mexican American communities.

Another fellow, Dorothy Roberts, a legal scholar and public policy researcher focused on racial inequities in social services, said she appreciated receiving the fellowship after spending decades writing about topics — such as the prosecution of pregnant Black women for using drugs, which she argues is inherently unjust — that other scholars considered inappropriate.

“I started this work in 1988,” said Roberts, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school and the author of books including “Shattered Bonds” and “Torn Apart,” both about institutional racism in the child welfare system. “To get this kind of recognition is very gratifying. Not only for me personally, but for all the people, especially Black women, who’ve been devalued in these systems.”

For Keivan G. Stassun, an astrophysicist and astronomer who focuses on expanding opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math fields for underrepresented populations, the recognition is an affirmation of his work as diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives are increasingly the target of partisan attacks.

Stassun, a professor at Vanderbilt University, cofounded both the Fisk-Vanderbilt Master’s-to-Ph.D. Bridge program, which brings graduate students from the historically Black Fisk University to Vanderbilt to pursue advanced studies, and the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation, which aims to help neurodiverse people find and maintain meaningful employment.

When Stassun received the call that he was selected, the MacArthur Foundation staff read aloud a biography it had written for him. For Stassun, who is Mexican and Iranian and also the father of an autistic son, the recognition combined personal and professional pride into one concrete moment.

“They are telling you, ‘This is how you are seen,’” he said, adding, “It’s quite a thing to be seen the way you would wish to be.”

The other 2024 fellows are:

Ruha Benjamin, a transdisciplinary scholar and writer
Jericho Brown, a poet
Tony Cokes, a media artist
Nicola Dell, a computer and information scientist
Johnny Gandelsman, a violinist and producer
Jennifer L. Morgan, a historian
Shailaja Paik, a historian
Joseph Parker, an evolutionary biologist
Ebony G. Patterson, a multimedia artist
Wendy Red Star, a visual artist
Jason Reynolds, a children’s and young adult writer
Benjamin Van Mooy, an oceanographer