Carol Anderson named winner of 2022 Gittler Prize

Carol Anderson, a leading scholar of African American studies and award-winning author, has been selected as the 2022 winner of the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize.

Anderson is author of several acclaimed books, including "White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide," which won the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and is also a New York Times Bestseller, a New York Times Editor’s Pick and listed on the Zora List of 100 Best Books by Black Woman Authors since 1850. Her young adult adaptation of “White Rage,” “We are Not Yet Equal,” was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

“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. We are pleased to honor her with the 2022 Gittler Prize,” said Brandeis President Ron Liebowitz.

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. The annual award includes a $25,000 prize and a medal. Past winners of the Gittler Prize include Howard C. Stevenson, John Paul Lederach, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Martha Minow, Gustavo Gutiérrez and Patricia Hill Collins '69, PhD '84. The prize is administered by the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life on behalf of the Office of the President and Office of the Provost of Brandeis University.

Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University, and has been elected into the Society of American Historians, named a W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Her research has garnered fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation, National Humanities Center, Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center, the University of Chicago’s Pozen Center for Human Rights, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Along with "White Rage," she is also author of "Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African-American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955," which was awarded both the Gustavus Myers and Myrna Bernath Book Awards; and "Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation," published in 2014.

"One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy," was long-listed for the National Book Award in Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Galbraith Book Award in Non-Fiction.

Her most recent book, “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America,” explores the anti-Blackness of the Second Amendment and the consequences for African Americans’ citizenship and lives. “The Second” was chosen as a New York Times Editor’s pick, Best Social Science Books of 2021 by Library Journal, and one of the Writer’s Bone Best Books of 2021.

Anderson earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Miami University and a doctorate in history from The Ohio State University. She was an associate professor of history at the University of Missouri before joining the faculty at Emory in 2009.

Anderson will be in residence at Brandeis from October 24 to 26, 2022. During this time, she will engage in a variety of activities and meetings with the campus community. Her residency will also include a formal award ceremony and keynote lecture, which is scheduled for the late afternoon of October 25.