"In this moment of planetary shift, scholars cannot afford to cede all the intellectual space to diagnosing deadly structures. We must also seed new patterns, practices, and politics for a more just and joyful world. Coupling critique with creativity, I am determined to take the imaginative terrain of world building seriously."
Ruha Benjamin is Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, Founding Director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, (2019) Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022), and Imagination: A Manifesto (2024), among many other publications
She is an internationally recognized scholar who has been studying the relationship between innovation and inequity, health and justice, and knowledge and power for more than twenty years. Her other books include People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier and Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life.
A world without prisons? Ridiculous. Schools that foster the genius of every child? Impossible. A society where everyone has food, shelter, love? In your dreams. Exactly. Princeton professor Ruha Benjamin believes in the liberating power of the imagination.
Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day
What to learn more about the Freedom Scholars?
Questions about the Freedom Scholar awards can be sent to freedomscholars@caseygrants.org.
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR THE FREEDOM SCHOLAR AWARDS HAS BEEN PROVIDED BY THE INATAI FOUNDATION.
