The September Transition

Today, we welcome 15 Class of 2020 National Fellows to New America. This class of National Fellows includes writers, educators, an artist, filmmakers, a doctor, editors, and scholars who are dedicated to enhancing conversations around the most pressing issues of our time.

Please join us in welcoming the Class of 2020; watch our class video, and read their bios.

This month serves as both an inflection and reflection point as we look forward to supporting the professional journey of this new class while also pausing to reflect on the impact made by last year’s class.

Since last September, the Class of 2019 had a remarkable year. They published and produced work that will shape our understanding of a number of pressing issues that include climate change, activism on Twitter, criminal justice reform, the difficulties of getting off psychiatric drugs, and more. We have compiled a list of highlights from their fellowship year.

We hope you enjoy catching up on the work from the Class of 2019!

• Rachel Aviv wrote an article for the New Yorker about the difficulties of getting off psychiatric drugs.
• Jill Filipovic wrote a cover story for POLITICO Magazine about Honduras, domestic violence, and the layered factors driving Honduran women to the southern U.S. border.
• Assia Boundaoui's documentary film, The Feeling of Being Watched, will join PBS's POV 32nd season. It will broadcast on October 14, 2019.
• Cara Fitzpatrick signed with Basic Books to publish her upcoming book, Unholy Alliance: A History of School Choice in America.
• Iona Craig joined National Public Radio’s Morning Edition to discuss the U.S. calling for a ceasefire in Yemen.
• Masha Gessen was awarded the 2018 Hitchens Prize. The prize is awarded to authors or journalists who demonstrate a commitment to free expression and to the pursuit of truth without regard to personal or professional consequences.
• Lisa M. Hamilton curated a New America event in NYC that featured celebrity chef JJ Johnson and New York Times Food reporter Julia Moskin.
• Sarah Jackson published research with colleagues in the Ada New Media Journal about the digital build-up to #MeToo through earlier feminist hashtags and activism on Twitter.
• Jonathan M. Katz wrote for the Atlantic about the effects of the erasure of birthright citizenship in the Dominican Republic.
• Karen Levy won a grant from Cornell University to organize a multidisciplinary conference focusing on understanding high-stakes human encounters with AI.
• Suki Kim wrote an investigative feature about South Korean President Moon Jae-in, President Trump, and Kim Jong-Un in the New Republic for the November print issue.
• Reuben Jonathan Miller joined the Decarceration Nation podcast to discuss "carceral citizenship."
• Chase Purdy wrote for Quartz about a deal between a Silicon Valley food technology company and a Japanese meat producer to create cell-cultured Wagyu beef.
• Kevin Sack wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about how the killings of nine parishioners at a black church in Charleston and 11 congregants at a synagogue in Pittsburgh brought the two communities together.
• Melissa Segura wrote an article for BuzzFeed News outlining the latest developments from one particular witness involved with a massive scandal in the Chicago justice department.
• David Wallace-Wells’ book The Uninhabitable Earth was reviewed in the New York Times, and the New York Review of Books.
• Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about the SAT's "Adversity Score." His forthcoming book Self-Portrait in Black and White will be published on October 15, 2019.