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Bridging Academia and Activism: Meet the 2024 Freedom Scholars
From poetry to policy, these scholar-activists are illuminating a path toward a more just future.
Sep 18, 2024
Today, Marguerite Casey Foundation welcomes the 2024 Freedom Scholar cohort. This year we are celebrating visionary scholar-activists at the forefront of transformative social change as well as a total of $9.5 million in awards to 38 scholars over the last five years—a powerful investment in ideas that accompany movements for collective well-being and social change.
Our Freedom Scholar awards, launched in 2020, are a testament to the critical role scholarship plays in supporting social movements. By awarding $250,000 in unrestricted funds to each scholar, Marguerite Casey Foundation (MCF) is supporting research, writing, and teaching that bolsters our collective belief in a better, more just world.
Freedom Scholars: Bridging Scholarship and Social Movements
The Freedom Scholar awards are more than simply an acknowledgment of academic excellence—they are part of MCF’s mission to build a country where our government prioritizes the needs of excluded and underrepresented people. These scholars play a vital role in bridging the gap between academic theory and grassroots organizing.
Consider the recent surge in student-led protests on campuses across the U.S. From Princeton to UCLA, Freedom Scholars have been key supporters of student-led efforts to demand divestment and win a cease-fire, bringing with them years of research and strategic thinking to help activists push for transformative demands and envision systemic change. Their work is fundamental to contesting power and developing new models of governance that serve the many, rather than the few.
The 2024 Freedom Scholars continue this tradition. These are no ordinary academics—they are change-makers who understand that the work of liberation doesn’t begin and end in the classroom.
Meet the 2024 Cohort: Visionaries for Justice and Equity
This year’s Freedom Scholar cohort reflects extensive expertise across disciplines and is united by their collective commitment to a more just world.
Take Natalie Diaz, for example, a poet and professor at Arizona State University whose work examines the intersections of Indigeneity, language, and power. She invites us to rethink how language can either perpetuate violence or reclaim histories. In a time when Indigenous languages and cultures are under threat, Diaz’s scholarship is particularly urgent, illuminating the vital role language plays in advancing collective liberation.
Then there’s Dr. Daniel Martinez HoSang from Yale University, whose research unpacks the politics of multicultural right-wing extremism. Dr. HoSang’s work sharpens our understanding of how racist dynamics operate within seemingly inclusive frameworks, highlighting the deep-rooted systems of inequality that continue to shape society. His work is not just a critique but a call to action, urging movements to confront these structures wherever we see them.
The Freedom Scholars of 2024 are not just theorists—they are strategists, organizers, and visionaries.
Dr. Nadine Naber from the University of Illinois Chicago brings to the cohort a community-engaged scholarship that draws important connections between global struggles for liberation, with a particular focus on Palestinian freedom. Dr. Naber’s work in solidarity movements teaches us the power of linking our struggles—showing that the fight for justice is always interconnected, whether it’s in Chicago, Gaza, or beyond.
Finally, Dr. K. Sabeel Rahman, a legal scholar at Cornell Law School, has been instrumental in helping policymakers and organizers engage more critically with the concept of public goods. His research explores how we must rethink public goods—such as healthcare, education, and housing—not as commodities, but as essential components of a thriving, equitable society. By leveraging legal theory for practical policy solutions, Dr. Sabeel’s work helps movements craft a vision for governance that prioritizes the well-being of our communities over corporate profits.
A Commitment to Transformative Change
The Freedom Scholars of 2024 are not just theorists—they are strategists, organizers, and visionaries. Their work represents the bold ideas and imaginative thinking essential for any social movement to succeed. And it’s precisely this kind of visionary work that Marguerite Casey Foundation is committed to supporting.
What sets the Freedom Scholar awards apart is the financial freedom they afford recipients. The $250,000 prize comes with no strings attached, allowing scholars to invest in the work that matters most to them. Some have used MCF funding to launch nonprofit organizations, while others focus on building movement infrastructure by supporting existing nonprofits, publishing movement-oriented literature, or opening retreat houses where organizers can strategize and recharge. This flexibility ensures that the scholars can meet their needs and goals in real time, without the bureaucratic constraints that often accompany traditional funding models for academics.
Looking Ahead: Building a Future of Justice and Liberation
As we celebrate the contributions of the 2024 Freedom Scholars, it’s clear that their work will have a lasting impact not just in academia, but in the communities they serve. Their scholarship is grounded in real-world struggles and solutions, and their commitment to justice is unwavering. They are the thinkers and doers helping to fuel the next generation of liberation movements.
I look forward to seeing the ongoing impact of the 2024 cohort and am proud that MCF remains steadfast in its commitment to amplifying transformative scholarship for meaningful change.
Together, with these visionary scholars, we are building a future where equity, justice, and liberation are not just ideals but lived realities for all.
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First-of-Its-Kind Report Details Hundreds of Millions Pumped Into Academia by Big Oil
Universities have used millions of dollars to fund research promoting natural gas as a "clean" alternative to oil and coal and downplaying the negative impacts of fossil fuel emissions.
Mar 01, 2023
An analysis of more than two dozen U.S. universities' donor bases reveals the lengths fossil fuel companies have gone to in recent years to manipulate research into the climate emergency, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into some of the country's schools as scientists struggle to convince policymakers that extractive industries must be reined in.
The Fossil Free Research (FFR) campaign partnered with progressive think tank Data for Progress to conduct the first-of-its-kind study—released Wednesday—of donations from companies including BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil, and found that between 2010 and 2020, fossil fuel giants donated more than $676 million to 27 universities that lead in the field of climate research.
That figure likely represents "just a fraction of the true total" amount that the industry has contributed to universities, said Geoffrey Supran, associate professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami and a member of the FFR Advisory Board.
"It's no mistake that fossil fuel companies have continued to make major financial gains through the climate crisis; fossil fuel industry executives, knowingly, have long misled the public about their impact on it and used their profits to manipulate climate research."
"Estimating this massive lower bound figure is a crucial first step towards compelling university officials to reckon with the conflicts of interest inherent in accepting fossil fuel money, especially to fund climate-related research," said Supran.
The schools that were found to be the top recipients of fossil fuel money include University of California, Berkeley, which took more than $154 million, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which took more than $108 million. Both schools received the vast majority of their fossil fuel funding from BP.
George Mason University and Stanford University both received more than $50 million and nine schools including Harvard University, Princeton University, Iowa State University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) all took more than $10 million each.
"It's no mistake that fossil fuel companies have continued to make major financial gains through the climate crisis; fossil fuel industry executives, knowingly, have long misled the public about their impact on it and used their profits to manipulate climate research," said Data for Progress.
The funding of climate research by the very companies worldwide researchers have called on to drastically reduce their carbon emissions presents "a serious conflict of interest," added the group.
The study pointed to numerous examples of universities using fossil fuel money to complete climate research, including:
- Stanford's use of the funding to support the work of the Doerr School of Sustainability, allowing funders "to counter claims that they are destroying the planet";
- MIT's development of the MIT Energy Initiative, which released a report in 2011 claiming natural gas offers a path to a "low-carbon future" and "dismissing research that found natural gas is, in fact, more harmful due to methane leaks"; and
- George Washington University's use of roughly $4 million from ExxonMobil, Shell, and Koch Industries to support its Regulatory Studies Center, which "crafts economic arguments that downplay the negative economic impacts of fossil fuel emissions."
Data for Progress polled 1,230 likely voters between January 20-23 about Fossil Free Research's findings and determined that universities' decision to accept fossil fuel funding is detrimental to their public image.
\u201cUniversity favorability drops by as much as 23 points when voters learn about fossil fuel donations funding climate research.\n\nWe also find that a majority of voters support increasing federal funding for climate research at colleges and universities.\u201d— Data for Progress (@Data for Progress) 1677699646
More than 61% of respondents had a favorable view of Harvard before learning about the schools' fossil fuel funding, compared to 47% after learning.
MIT's approval rating plummeted by nine points, and GWU's fell by 11 points.
More than three-quarters of likely voters said they support universities adopting funding transparency policies to ensure readers of the institutions' climate research are informed about funding sources behind the research.
More than half of respondents said they would support legislation to prevent the federal government from using research with conflicts of interest when crafting policy, and 58% of voters said they supported increased federal funding for climate research at colleges and universities.
"For far too long, the fossil fuel industry has partnered with universities to greenwash its reputation and gain undue influence on climate-related research quietly and in the background, but not anymore," said Chelsey Gilchrist, an Ohio State University student and FFR board member. "With the help of this report, students will continue to expose campus ties to the fossil fuel industry and hold their universities accountable until Fossil Free Research is won."
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