MacArthur seeds change with `genius grants' -- Sept. 30, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

An acid attack when he was just 4 years old disfigured and blinded Joshua A. Miele for life.

A deranged neighbor came to the Miele family’s door in Brooklyn, N.Y., and threw sulfuric acid in the child’s face.

Miele, 52, didn’t let the tragedy stop him. He earned a Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley and became a designer of adaptive technology. He currently works at Amazon, helping blind and visually impaired people use everyday technologies.

“I want to be famous for the right reasons, for the work I’ve done, and not for some stupid thing that happened to me 40 years ago,” Miele told The New York Times in 2013. And now he is.

Miele is one of the 25 exceptionally creative people the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced would receive $625,000, no strings attached, paid out in quarterly installments over five years.

The awards are popularly known as “genius grants,” but the foundation does not use the term as it connotes intelligence, but not creativity or originality. The foundation calls the winners fellows.

“As we emerge from the shadows of the past two years, this class of 25 Fellows helps us reimagine what’s possible,” Cecilia Conrad, managing director of the fellows program, said in a statement on macfound.org.

This year’s group includes historians, scientists, economists, artists, poets, performers, filmmakers and activists. Many have devoted their careers to raising consciousness about systemic racism, inequality and social injustice, and almost all challenge the existing state of affairs in one way or another.

Proving there are second acts in life, two recipients are former prison inmates.

Reginald Dwayne Betts, 40, is a poet and lawyer at Yale Law School who served nearly nine years in prison for carjacking when he was 16. He turned his life around with books, reading and writing in his cell every day.

A practicing lawyer, he represents incarcerated clients on issues of clemency, cash bail and lengthy prison terms and recently started building libraries in prisons.

Desmond Meade, 54, a civil rights activist, triumphed over addiction, homelessness and a 15-year prison sentence for possession of a firearm as a felon. He is executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, working to restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated persons.

Historian and writer Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a professor of African American Studies at Princeton, writes extensively about race issues and has argued that Black elected officials are often complicit in perpetuating systemic racism by supporting policies that maintain the status quo.

Among the better-known winners is Ibram X. Kendi, author of the 2019 bestseller book “How to be an Antiracist,” which sold 2 million copies.

Safiya Noble, an internet studies and digital media scholar at UCLA, is author of “Algorithms of Oppression,” which contends search engines are biased, not neutral, and magnify racism, sexism and harmful stereotypes.

Monica Munoz Martinez, a public historian, studies and writes about cases of racial violence along the Texas-Mexico border in the 20^th century.

Filmmakers Cristine Ibarra and her partner Alex Rivera each won grants for their work exploring the immigrant experience. Ibarra describes herself as coming from “a long line of border crossers,” and Rivera has long been interested in “society that needs work but rejects workers.”

No one can apply for a MacArthur grant, and winners are nominated and chosen in a confidential process that can take years. Recipients must either live in the United States or be U.S. citizens. Elected officials or anyone who holds a high government office are ineligible.

The grants are designed to liberate recipients to pursue their creative instincts “for the benefit of human society.”

An additional benefit is that the grants program resonates with the rest of us. A 2012 study found it “inspires members of the general public to pursue their own personal creative activities and to think about how they can use their own skills and ideas to make the world a better place.”

Now more than ever, we need our best minds to tackle the persistent problems facing our country and the world. Although popular culture encourages and rewards the lowest common denominator, the MacArthur grants remind each of us to use our talents to challenge the status quo.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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When scientists were prized -- now! -- Oct. 8, 2020 column

 By MARSHA MERCER

Growing up in Hawaii, Jennifer Doudna loved exploring the exotic rainforest near her home.

Fascinated by a plant whose leaves folded shut when she touched them, she knew a chemical reaction was involved. But why did it happen?

Doudna’s high school chemistry teacher encouraged her to pursue her questions and study science.

The curious girl eventually became a superstar of science -- professor of molecular and cell biology and of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and executive director of the Innovative Genomics Institute at Berkeley.

On Tuesday, Doudna, 56, received the Nobel Prize for chemistry for developing the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology. The CRISPR tool can change DNA in plants and animals and is used widely to treat cancer and cure inherited diseases.

She shares the prize with her French research collaborator, Emmanuelle Charpentier, 51, who lives in Berlin. The two are only the sixth and seventh women ever to win the Nobel for chemistry.

“This year’s prize is about rewriting the code of life,” said Goran Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announcing the prize.

It was a good week for science and scientists.

Nobel prizes also were announced for physics and medicine. The physics prize went to three scientists for their work on black holes, and the medicine prize to three scientists who discovered the hepatitis C virus.

The Nobel committee said by discovering the virus the scientists had “made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives.”

The Nobel prize guarantees international acclaim, a place in history and cash prizes each worth about $1.1 million.

In this country, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named several scientists among the 21 winners of what are popularly known as “genius grants.”

The foundation does not like the term genius because it connotes only a very high I.Q. It calls the winners fellows, who are brilliant and highly original and creative.

Each fellow receives a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000 paid out in quarterly installments over five years.

The money is liberating, but what makes the award so coveted is being recognized as exceptional in one’s field. You can’t apply for a MacArthur grant; you are chosen. Just about the only requirement is fellows must either live in the United States or be a U.S. citizen.

The Nobel and MacArthur awards remind us in 2020 of the good that comes when we believe in science and reward scientists. The recipients have devoted their lives to making the world a better place at a time when science is often disparaged and scientists denigrated. Their personal stories will inspire a new generation.

This year’s MacArthur class includes Damien Fair, 44, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine who studies the developing brain from infancy to young adulthood. His research aims to improve the long-term health for kids with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, autism and other conditions.

Catherine Coleman Flowers, 62, of Montgomery, Alabama, is an environmental activist who works on sanitation and wastewater issues in rural areas.

Some of the winners focus on theoretical research, others work in more practical fields and some do both. During the pandemic, Doudna is using the CRISPR system in her lab to search for a simple, inexpensive test to detect the novel coronavirus in people’s saliva.

The sole American sharing the Nobel physics prize is astrophysicist Andrea Ghez, 55, a professor at UCLA who discovered an invisible and extremely heavy object that governs the orbits of stars at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. A supermassive black hole is the only currently known explanation.

She is only the fourth woman to win the Nobel for physics. Marie Curie was the first in 1903.

Ghez has the distinction of also winning a MacArthur “genius grant” in 2008. She used three-quarters of the prize money in ways other parents will appreciate – on her two children.  

“Just hiring more help with the logistics of life and not feeling that was a bad thing – it was part of doing my job well,” Ghez told The New York Times in 2015. “I was so thrilled that I could have a work and family life.”

We’re thrilled she could too. Everyone benefits from the hard work of these dedicated scientists.

(c) Marsha Mercer 2020. All rights reserved.

When geniuses walked the Earth -- now! -- Oct. 3, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER         

Imagine you receive $625,000 out of the blue with no strings attached.

What would you do? Quit your job, pack your bags and take an extended vacation?

Ah, that’s what separates most of us from MacArthur fellows. The winners of what are commonly known as “genius grants” choose to keep working. For that, we can be grateful.  

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation yearly awards fellowships to residents or citizens of the United States who exhibit extraordinary creativity. Each receives $625,000 in quarterly installments over five years.  

With the bitter fight over presidential impeachment dominating the news 24/7, it was easy to miss the foundation’s Sept. 25 quiet and purely positive announcement.

The diverse group of 26 fellows ranges in age from 30 to 67, and includes scientists, historians, professors, writers and artists.

The foundation takes a wide view of artistic and intellectual creativity, theoretical and practical. The grants give promising thinkers and doers the freedom and flexibility to pursue their work wherever it leads.

In several ways, the genius grants seem distinctly not of our time, when outrageous remarks and behavior command far more attention than being smart and working hard.

The foundation doesn’t even use the word genius. A reporter called the first fellowships genius grants in 1981, and the term stuck.

Ours is an age of relentless self-promotion, but no one can apply for a grant. You must be nominated by authorities in your field, and the selection process is private. Anyone who holds elective office or an advanced government post is automatically ineligible.

Recipients are called with the good news and allowed to tell only one person until the big announcement a couple of weeks later.

Most grantees have never gone viral and, thus, are largely unknown to the public. The 2019 class includes several fellows tackling seemingly intractable scientific and social problems.

Four are working on climate change and its effects. Three are scientists: Andrea Dutton, 46, at the University of Wisconsin, who studies melting ice sheets; Stacy Jupiter, 43, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, who works in Fiji on conservation efforts, and Jerry Mitrovica, 58, of Harvard University, who studies rising sea levels. Artist Mel Chin, 67, lives in Egypt, N.C.

Jenny Tung, 37, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke, studies how social experiences affect rates of disease and longevity in baboons in Kenya, work that could apply to humans.

Attorney Sujartha Baliga, 48, practices restorative justice, survivor-centered alternatives to the traditional legal system. Legal scholar Danielle Citron, 50, studies the effects of cyber harassment and hate crimes. Lisa Daugaard, 53, director of the Public Defender Association in Washington state, is a criminal justice reformer.

Urban designer Emmanuel Pratt, 42, revitalizes abandoned buildings and communities on Chicago’s South Side with agriculture and new construction.

Literary scholar Jeffrey Alan Miller, 35, discovered the earliest known draft of the King James Bible. Classicist Emily Wilson, 47, was the first woman to translate “The Odyssey” into English.

Ocean Vuong, 30, who came to the United States as a refugee from Vietnam at the age of 2, is a poet and fiction writer. Lynda Barry, 63, is a graphic novelist, Mary Halvorson, 38, a guitarist and composer, and Sarah Michelson, 55, a choreographer.

No one looks over fellows’ shoulders or reports on how they use the money. 

“If every fellow hit only home runs, we would worry that we were not taking enough risks or that we’d chosen the wrong people,” Cecilia A. Conrad, the program’s director, wrote in a 2013 op-ed in The Washington Post.

Among fellows who have hit home runs: surgeon and writer Atul Gawande and writers Cormac McCarthy and Te-Nehisi Coates.

Even today, most of the 1,040 MacArthur grantees aren’t famous, even if they have made significant contributions to a better world.

Few know the name Joel Schwartz, the first government worker to win a genius grant. But, as a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator once said, we should think of Schwartz every time we fill up our car with gas.

An epidemiologist toiling at EPA in the 1980s, Schwartz did the research into the health effects of lead exposure that resulted in the phaseout of lead in gasoline. 

Schwartz won in 1991, when the grant was $275,000. He continues his research at Harvard.

These dark and turbulent times in Washington challenge our sense of optimism about the American future. To stay positive, we’ll need to focus on what’s going right in the country.

The MacArthur genius grants give us hope.   

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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