ICYMI: Mellon Foundation Grants More Than $12 Million to Recipients of Inaugural Higher Learning Open Call for Civic Engagement and Social Justice-Related Research and Projects

"The Mellon Foundation—the nation’s largest funder of the arts, culture and humanities—today announced more than $12 million in funding to support twenty-six colleges and universities across the nation mounting social justice-related research or curricular projects."

"The grants are the result of Mellon’s Higher Learning inaugural open call—announced in Spring 2022 as a means of continuing to support inquiry into issues of vital social, cultural, and historical import. The open call invited proposals from institutions exploring three distinct topical categories—Civic Engagement and Voting Rights, Race and Racialization in the United States, and Social Justice and the Literary Imagination—in an effort to help illuminate the significance of voting rights controversies in US history from numerous humanities perspectives; demonstrate the complex import of race and racialization within US culture and society; and highlight the role of the literary imagination in making and remaking worlds and societies, past and present."

"Open to any accredited, non-profit, four-year liberal arts degree-granting institution in the US with more than 1,000 full-time degree-seeking undergraduates and multiple humanities degree programs, the call generated more than 280 submissions from 150 institutions. From the initial applicant pool, 26 institutions were selected to develop full proposals and were confirmed to receive funding."

Grantees included Bard College, Clemson University, Florida Atlantic University, Vanderbilt University, Indiana University, and more.

Read the full announcement here.