Carol Anderson was selected as the 2022 winner of the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize. We are pleased to honor her with the 2022 Gittler Prize,” said President Ron Liebowitz. Anderson is a scholar of African American studies as well as an award-winning author.
“Carol Anderson has produced seminal scholarship that not only explains how structural racism shapes life, policy, and politics in America but also demands the action necessary to bring about a better future for us all,” said President Ron Liebowitz, according to the prize’s page.
Anderson got her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from Miami University; she got her PhD in history from Ohio State University. She used to be an associate professor of history at the University of Missouri. Currently, Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University, which she joined in 2009.
Anderson wrote numerous books, including “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide,” “Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African-American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955,” “Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation,” “One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy” and “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.” She has also written a young adult adaptation of “White Rage:” “We are Not Yet Equal.”
According to her website, Anderson’s research focuses on “how policy is made and unmade, how racial inequality and racism affect that process and outcome, and how those who have taken the brunt of those laws, executive orders, and directives have worked to shape, counter, undermine, reframe, and, when necessary, dismantle the legal and political edifice used to limit their rights and their humanity.”
Anderson has also been awarded numerous fellowships and grants, including those by Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History American Council of Learned Societies and the Ford Foundation. She has also appeared on numerous shows.
Anderson will receive her award on Oct. 25, during a formal award ceremony, while she will be in residence at Brandeis from Oct. 24 to 26.
The Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize was created in “2007 by the late Professor Joseph B. Gittler to recognize outstanding and lasting scholarly contributions to racial, ethnic and/or religious relations,” according to its website. The winner also receives a $25 thousand prize and a medal.
Brandeis is also currently accepting nominations for the 2023 Gittler Prize, which are due on April 3. “To be considered for the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize, candidates must be formally nominated”, according to the website. This means that self nominations are not accepted for the award, the nominees must be proposed by another part. “Nominations must be submitted in writing or by using the online nomination form; they should not exceed 1,000 words,” according to the webpage regarding the requirements for the prize.
The Gittler Prize is hosted by the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life on behalf of the Office of the President and Office of the Provost.
