Apr 16, 2025
Dear colleagues,
We are pleased to announce that David S. Meyer, Professor of Sociology, has been named a 2025 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Professor Meyer joins an exclusive cohort of 26 distinguished fellows nationwide selected from nearly 300 nominees. Each fellow will receive $200,000 in philanthropic support for their research in the social sciences and humanities that addresses important and enduring issues confronting society.
Professor Meyer will use the funding to investigate how social movements and protest campaigns use polarization to achieve political progress, while also examining how polarization can undermine the ability of governments to make effective policies. Through an analysis of both historical and contemporary protest movements, Professor Meyer aims to evaluate strategies that activists and authorities can use to manage the polarization resulting from successful movements. His research will offer recommendations to political organizers within and outside government.
Professor Meyer is the author or editor of nine books – including his most recent work, How Social Movements (Sometimes) Matter – and he has published more than 100 articles, book reviews, and reports that have shaped perspectives on social movements and politics for decades. Since 2010, he has run the Politics Outdoors blog, which focuses on protest politics and social movements. Professor Meyer is an op-ed contributor and recognized expert, with his work appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Conversation, among other publications. His research has been funded by the Carnegie Corporation, National Science Foundation, American Sociological Association, The Urban Child Institute, and UC Irvine Jack W. Peltason Center for the Study of Democracy. In 2017, he received the John D. McCarthy Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Scholarship of Social Movements and Collective Behavior from the Center for the Study of Social Movements at the University of Notre Dame.
Please join us in congratulating Professor Meyer on this achievement.
Sincerely,
Hal Stern
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor
Bill Maurer
Dean, School of Social Sciences