On September 27, 2023, Premilla Nadasen, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History, was announced as a 2023 Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar. She is one of just six recipients named this year. This prestigious award was created in 2020 to showcase the foundation’s support of scholarship committed to “shifting the balance of power to those in society who have long been excluded from having it and benefiting from its rewards.”
The Freedom Scholars Award recognizes progressive academics who are leading research and engaging in movement organizing that advances racial and economic justice. Nadasen has been a social justice organizer for many decades, and she has written extensively about the multiple meanings of feminism, alternative labor movements, and grassroots community organizing. She is also the co-director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women, the former president of the National Women’s Studies Association, and a member of the Society of American Historians. As a Freedom Scholars honoree, Nadasen will receive $250,000 in unrestricted funds to advance her work in social justice scholarship and movement leadership. Her new book, Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, which discusses the care economy’s roots in racial capitalism and strategies of resistance that have envisioned new forms of caring, will be published on Oct. 10, 2023.
Previous winners of the Freedom Scholars Award include Sarah Haley, associate professor of history at Columbia University, Mariame Kaba, former BCRW Activist-in-Residence, and Dean Spade ’97, former BCRW Activist-in-Residence.