Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic magazine, was forced to eat his words in an interview with the New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones. The two spoke about race in America, focusing on Hannah-Jones’ specialty, segregated schools. Hannah-Jones won a MacArthur “Genius” Award this year for her reporting on the resegregation of U.S. schools….
(JTA) — An Israeli computer scientist is among the winners of this year’s MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants. Regina Barzilay, 46, is a computational linguist based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose work includes training machines to understand different languages. Her research helped decipher part of the semitic Ugaritic language by mapping it onto Hebrew,…
A Princeton University psychologist who studies how to reduce social tensions — from high school bullying to ethnic tension in Rwanda — was selected for a 2017 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. Betsy Levy Paluck is one of 24 fellows announced Wednesday. Paluck has dedicated her career in research psychology to determining how psychological insights can be…
If there’s a Jewish gene for smarts, the list of MacArthur Fellows might be proof positive. American Jews have been heavily represented among recipients of the “Genius Grants,” the $625,000 annual prizes given to the nation’s most promising artists, scholars, and writers. It’s no different this year, as laurels go to the composer Julia Wolfe…
Marina Rustow got the phone call informing her that she was officially a genius while shopping for clothes with her 4-year-old. Rustow, 46, a Princeton University professor who has plumbed unexplored depths of the Cairo Geniza, this year became the first academic expert in Jewish studies to win one of the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius grants”…
When Nicole Eisenman, 50, learned she was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, she said she was shocked. But the honor didn’t come as a surprise to those who know her work as a painter, sculptor, printer and draftswoman. Eisenman is a painter who uses narrative elements to reimagine and explore gender and familial roles….
Ben Lerner, 36, began his writing career as a poet, but his two debut novels, one published in 2011 and the other last year, quickly gained critical acclaim and have both been called “brilliant” and “revolutionary,” among other praise. This year Lerner received a MacArthur “genius” fellowship of $625,000 for his work. Though he has…
At least three Jews and one Jewish studies professor are among this year’s 24 winners of $625,000 MacArthur grants for so-called geniuses. Author Ben Lerner, environmental health advocate Gary Cohen, artist Nicole Eisenman and Princeton professor Marina Rustow, who teaches Jewish studies and is an expert on the Cairo genizah, are in the 2015 group…
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