TCNJ News
For Immediate Release
April 7, 2008
TCNJ professor named as a 2008 Carnegie Scholar
Miriam Lowi receives grant to enrich public discourse on Islam
EWING, NJ … The College of New Jersey is very proud to announce that Miriam Lowi, associate professor of political science, has been named by the Carnegie Corporation of New York President Vartan Gregorian as one of only 20 new Carnegie Scholars this year. The new Scholars were selected for their compelling ideas and commitment to enriching the quality of the public dialogue on Islam.
The Corporation provides funding, with two-year grants of up to $100,000, and intellectual support to well-established and promising young thinkers, analysts and writers. The 2008 awardees are the fourth consecutive annual class to focus on Islam, bringing to 91 the number of Carnegie Scholars devoted to the topic since the program began in 2000.
Commenting on the 2008 Carnegie Scholars and the program’s current focus on Islam, Gregorian said, “We are cultivating a diverse scholarly community spanning a range of disciplines with the expectation that their voices will help Americans develop a more complex understanding of Muslim societies here and throughout the world—revealing Islam’s rich diversity. Only through vibrant dialogue, guided by bold and nuanced scholarship, can we move public thinking into new territory.”
The Carnegie Scholars program allows independent-minded thinkers to pursue original projects oriented toward catalyzing intellectual discourse as well as guiding more focused and pragmatic policy discussions. Scholars are selected not only for their originality and proven intellectual capacity, but for their demonstrated ability to communicate their ideas in ways that can catalyze public discourse.
Lowi’s project, titled Islam and Oil: The Economy of Meaning, will examine the relationship between Islam and oil: how interpretations of Islam have shaped the exploitation of oil and allocation of oil revenues, and how the latter have influenced adherence to and the practice of Islam. She suggests that a disjuncture exists in the Middle East and North Africa between Islamic norms and expectations about public resources, on the one hand, and state policy and practices, on the other, and that this disjuncture is a source of instability in the region. To explore the relationship and elucidate the disjuncture, Lowi will study the writings of Muslim thinkers, Islamist organizations, and the popular Arab media, to understand how Muslims think their oil wealth should be exploited. She will investigate state policies financed by oil to learn how elites have exploited oil wealth, both within and outside the state, and their effects on Muslim publics. Lowi’s research will culminate in a book-length manuscript on a relationship that is vital, yet has remained uncharted.
Dr. Gitenstein, president of the College, said, “Professor Lowi's recognition by the Carnegie Foundation is validation of what her students, colleagues, and friends know: Miriam is an extraordinary scholar who is doing very important research on some of the most pressing issues affecting the Middle East. For the entire TCNJ community, I congratulate her and thank her for the recognition she brings our community.”
The Carnegie Scholars program was established by Vartan Gregorian in 1999 to provide financial and intellectual support to writers, analysts and thinkers addressing some of the most critical research questions of our time. By identifying and investing in some of the brightest and most innovative contemporary thinkers, Carnegie Corporation seeks to inform its own programs as well as to advance and diffuse knowledge that will uplift our nation and humanity. Since 2005, the program has supported scholars whose work seeks to promote American understanding of Islam as a religion, the characteristics of Muslim societies, in general, and those of American Muslim communities, in particular.
Patricia L. Rosenfield, who leads the Carnegie Scholars Program said, “America’s discourse on Islam will benefit from the Scholars’ enthusiastic quest to transform complex information into useful, structured knowledge. Their superb scholarship is often daring, always accessible and truly public.” Rosenfield said that emerging and established scholars alike are encouraged to orient their writing and speaking beyond purely academic audiences.
Financial support for emerging scholars—those who are refining their voices and building their bodies of work—is especially important as it helps validate credibility and serves as an investment that yields considerable benefits later to the scholarly community. However crucial, financial support is not the only form of support provided to Scholars. The Corporation provides them entrée into its various networks, including an active community of past Scholars, and offers professional development, such as workshops aimed at improving their capacity to communicate their scholarship to broad audiences.
Every year since 2000, Carnegie Corporation of New York selects as many as 20 Carnegie Scholars following a rigorous and highly competitive process. Nominations are invited from more than 500 nominators representing a broad range of disciplines and institutions, including academia, research institutes, non-profit organizations, the media and foundations. Nominators are asked to identify original thinkers who have the ability—or promise—to spark academic and public debate, and whose work transcends academic boundaries.
A detailed project proposal and multi-step review process, utilizing Carnegie Corporation officers and external reviewers, identifies as finalists those nominees who offer a combination of original scholarship, past accomplishments, potential for impact on the field and capacity to communicate to the broader public and policymakers.
About The College of New Jersey
TCNJ currently is ranked as one of the 75 "Most Competitive" schools in the nation by Barron's Profiles of American Colleges, is rated the No. 1 public institution in the northern region of the country by U.S. News & World Report, and is one of Kiplinger's Personal Finance's top educational values in the country. In 2006, the College joined an elite group of institutions when it was awarded a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. Fewer than 10 percent of the nation's colleges and universities share this honor.
