What would you do with $625K? A Clemson professor earns chance of a career to decide for himself
“Sharing joy unbound today, y’all! Not just my regular wild joy — but holler-cry - bellylaugh - tears -in-my-eyes, shout-to-the-sky, soar-and-fly, jubilation! This is a full on flocking of joy! A joy murmuration ! A joygasm!”
That’s how Clemson University ornithologist and poet J. Drew Lanham announced on Facebook Wednesday he had been selected as a 2022 MacArthur Fellow.
Called the genius grant colloquially, the fellowship provides a no-strings-attached stipend of $625,000, paid quarterly over five years. The John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation funds the program. John MacArthur was the owner of Bankers Life & Casualty Company in Chicago and owned real estate all over the country.
Lanham was one of 25 people selected this year.
He called the award, not one for genius but for “the genius of unfettered generosity in its disbursement to stoke the creative fires of unique potentials at pivotal points in Fellows’ careers.”
Lanham is from Edgefield and has been with Clemson for more than two decades. His primary interest is birds and how they relate to their environment and has sought to help people understand the importance of conservation.
Most recently he has been outspoken about the role of a Black scientist in the study of nature.
In his video on the MacArthur fellow website he said, “birding while black is a thing,” describing how he has to be aware of his surroundings in certain places. He wrote a 2013 article in Orion magazine called “Nine Rules for the Black Birdwatcher,” among them a caution against birding at night.
In an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered” about the article, he said, “Well, you know, I grew up in Edgefield, South Carolina, kind of in the boondocks, and so, you know, birds were just a natural part of my life. And as I began to watch birds from the second grade onward, you know, I didn’t run into anyone who looked like me who liked birds. You know, it just became clear that it was an overwhelmingly white hobby.”
This was well before the woman in Central Park in New York City — widely denounced as Central Park Karen — called police on a Black man who was simply birdwatching and accused him of threatening her. Lanham was interviewed about the incident and the Orion article afterward, in which he said Black bird watchers not only need binoculars but also two to three forms of identification and should never wear a hoodie.
Among his publications are “The Home Place - Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature,” which won the Southern Book Prize.
About the fellowship, Lanham said “For me this is beyond any dream I’ve ever been bold enough to imagine. Yes, a friend or two have suggested it and even in the mentioning of such a distant possibility I’ve been honored, even as I’ve summarily dismissed it as improbable as the powerball lottery I never play.”
He said the award gives him the gift of time.
“To dream. To write. To wander. To watch. To provoke. To ponder. To create. To just be,” he said.
