Daniel HoSang Named 2024 Freedom Scholar
HoSang received a $250,000 grant in recognition of his scholarship drawing upon and supporting social justice movements.
Daniel Martinez HoSang, Professor of American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, has been named as a 2024 Freedom Scholar by the Marguerite Casey Foundation.
The honor, given to four scholars and artists this year, recognizes scholarship that draws insights from and supports social justice movements. The award comes with an unrestricted grant of $250,000.
The Marguerite Casey Foundation highlights scholars whose work engages meaningfully with and ultimately serves the public – something HoSang has been doing for eight years now at Yale. “We can produce topflight scholarship that advances our fields while also remaining connected to larger publics and communities,” he says. “We have obligations to local students and teachers in New Haven, for example, who also want work and collaborations that address their priorities. How do we stay accountable to them?”
A representative for the Marguerite Casey Foundation said that HoSang was selected because his scholarship “has long been at the leading edge of helping us to deepen our understanding of the complex and contradictory factors that compel growing numbers of people of color to support increasingly conservative political formations and parties. His thinking has helped to sharpen the field’s understanding of the politics of multicultural white supremacy and how it can be uprooted.”
HoSang is the author and co-editor of six books about racial formation, politics, and social movements, and teaches a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses. One current project exploring the growth in political conservatism among people of color will be featured in an upcoming public symposium at Yale titled, “The Politics of the Multiracial Right.” He is also a Race and Democracy fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, where he conducts research on the changing political environment shaping higher education.
HoSang plans to channel a portion of the funds granted by the Freedom Scholar award into three specific projects: supporting K-12 public school teachers in Connecticut through the Anti-Racist Teaching & Learning Collective, which he helped form in 2019; continued support for the Anti-Eugenics Collective at Yale, which documents the histories and legacies of the American eugenics movement at Yale and beyond; and the formalization of a community organizing fellowship that he’s been running informally at Yale for several years.
“The organizing fellowship gives students concrete experiences where they can use their skills to work for a labor union, immigrant rights group, or another community-based organization,” HoSang says, highlighting the value in showing public-service minded students that they have robust, fulfilling career options.
HoSang hopes that the award will also signal to other faculty that there is support for doing this kind of public-oriented work on campus and beyond. “There are many colleagues across the university working in the School of Medicine, the Law School, and many other programs whose scholarship advances social justice and the public good. Awards like this affirm that we can do this work proudly.”
Featured image: Daniel HoSang, Maguerite Casey Foundation 2024 Freedom Scholar. Photo courtesy of the Marguerite Casey Foundation.