MacArthur Foundation Announces 2021 ‘Genius’ Grant Winners
The New York Times
This year’s 25 winners include Ibram X. Kendi, who wrote “How to Be an Antiracist,” the poet Hanif Abdurraqib and the writer and curator Nicole Fleetwood. The awards comes with prestige — and $625,000.
The historian and social critic Ibram X. Kendi is used to getting hate mail. And sometimes the disdain for him and his work takes the form of a phone call. So when he does not recognize the number he does not often answer.
Such was the case on a recent day when Dr. Kendi, who wrote the best-selling book, “How to Be an Antiracist,” ignored a call from Chicago. It would take a text-message exchange with the caller and a little online sleuthing, but he eventually discovered that the person calling was from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He was intrigued: Were they calling to talk about a potential research collaboration — or was it something else?
Dr. Kendi let them call again. And when he picked up, he would learn that the foundation was calling to convey happy news — the something else he had allowed as a possibility: He had been awarded a prestigious (and lucrative) MacArthur Fellowship.
