2 New Jersey ‘Geniuses' Earn MacArthur Fellowship Grants

He’s a designer and urban planner who has helped to transform Newark’s waterfront along the Passaic River. She’s a Princeton University psychologist professor who is helping to provide new insights into reducing discrimination, bullying and ethnic conflict.

And together, Damon Rich and Betsy Levy Paluck are New Jersey’s two “geniuses” for 2017.

Rich and Paluck were among 24 MacArthur Fellows grant recipients who received a $625,000 “no strings attached” award, given to high-achieving people to help them “pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations.”

The unique awards - sometimes called the "MacArthur Genius Grants" - are given directly to the recipients instead of institutions and not monitored for results – are not earmarked for a specific project, meaning Rich and Paluck will be free to spend the cash as they see fit.

The money is paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years, according to the MacArthur Fellows Program. There are no restrictions on becoming a fellow, except that nominees must be either residents or citizens of the United States, and must not hold elective office or advanced positions in government.

The MacArthur Fellows Program provides biographies for Rich and Paluck on its website. Some highlights of their careers and work are included below.

DAMON RICH

• Founded the Center for Urban Pedagogy
• Served as chief urban designer and director of planning (2008–2015) for Newark
• Worked with long-standing advocates like Ironbound Community Corporation to begin transforming Newark's waterfront along the Passaic River with public parks, trails, and environmental installations
• Engaged a citywide coalition of neighborhood-based organizations in replacing Newark's “unwieldy and outdated zoning and land-use regulations” with a user-friendly version
• Co-founded independent design studio “Hector”
• Attended Deep Springs College and received a B.A. (1997) from Columbia University
• Has taught architecture and planning courses at Harvard University, Barnard College, Syracuse University, and Columbia University and co-authored the book “Street Value: Shopping, Planning, and Politics on Fulton Street” (2010)
• Work has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Netherlands Architecture Institute, the Newark Public Library, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

BETSY LEVY PALUCK

• Serves as a professor of psychology and public affairs and deputy director of the Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science and Policy at Princeton University
• Undertook a year-long field experiment on the use of media to promote ethnic tolerance in post-conflict Rwanda
• Along with colleagues, has engaged nearly 25,000 students in nearly 60 schools in New Jersey in a series of investigations around bullying, harassment and prejudice
• Research has been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Social Issues, Cognition, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Psychological Bulletin
• Received a B.S. (2000) and Ph.D. (2007) from Yale University
• Was a scholar at the Harvard Academy for International Affairs (2007–2009)

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Photos: MacArthur Foundation, YouTube