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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

2014 MacArthur ‘genius grants’ awarded

Associated Press

CHICAGO – A professor whose research is helping a California police department improve its strained relationship with the black community and a lawyer who advocates for victims of domestic abuse are among the 21 winners of this year’s MacArthur Foundation “genius grants.”

The Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced today the 2014 recipients, who will each receive $625,000 to spend any way they like.

The professor and lawyer are among several recipients whose work involves topics that have dominated the news in the past year.

“I think getting this (grant) speaks to people’s sense that this is the kind of work that needs to be done,” said recipient Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford University social psychologist who has researched racial stereotypes and crime.

Her work prompted the Oakland, California, police department to ask for her help studying racial biases among its officers and how those biases play out on the street.

The justice system is also at the heart of Sarah Deer’s work as a legal scholar and advocate for Native American women living on reservations, who suffer higher-than-average rates of domestic abuse and sexual violence. Deer, a Native American who teaches law in Minnesota, met with women who simply stopped reporting such attacks because their tribal governments had been stripped of the authority to investigate and because federal authorities were often unwilling to do so, she said.

The foundation pointed to her instrumental role in reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act by Congress in 2013 that restored some of those abilities to tribes.