PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Melvin Rogers, a professor of political science at Brown University, has received a $200,000 fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to support research examining the intersection of political polarization and democracy in the United States.
Rogers is one of 24 Andrew Carnegie fellows selected in 2026 from a pool of more than 381 nominees. He said that receiving the fellowship for his project, “Beyond Nostalgia and Despair: Storytelling and Polarization in American Democracy,” is a meaningful honor that will enable a period of sustained research and writing.
“The central aim of my research is to better understand why contemporary political polarization is so persistent, even when citizens seemingly share overlapping commitments to democratic ideals,” said Rogers, who joined the Brown faculty in 2017.
The fellowship will support archival research and writing and enable Rogers to organize conferences that bring scholars together to examine how civic storytelling shapes democratic life. He describes civic storytelling as the practice of creating and using shared narratives — for example, telling a story about the founding of the United States as a promise of freedom to define national identity.
“My view is that political divisions are not simply a matter of disagreement over policy but are anchored in deeper narratives about who we are as a political community, what we owe one another and who counts as one of us,” Rogers said. “Our highest ideals are carried in these stories, distinguishing friends and enemies within, constraining the reach of our ideas and limiting their potential.”
Rogers’ ongoing political science research is centered around what he describes as a “simple but demanding concern: What kinds of people must we be — in thought and practice — to meet the demands of democratic life?”
His scholarship engages historical and philosophical figures of American political thought who have offered responses to that question. Rogers’ 2023 book “The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy and Freedom in African American Political Thought,” examined the faith African Americans have placed in democracy despite experiencing conditions of injustice. He is also the author of “The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality and the Ethos of Democracy” about American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer John Dewey. He has also edited several volumes of essays, including “African American Political Thought: A Collected History.”
The Carnegie fellowships are awarded to scholars annually to support high-caliber research in the humanities and social sciences that addresses important issues confronting society across complex political, economic, technological, humanistic and sociological topics. Selected from a record number of nominees, the 2026 fellows include 12 scholars from public U.S. universities, 11 scholars from private U.S. universities, and one scholar from a public university in Canada.