While research funding is under political scrutiny, the world needs reminding of what scholarship can achieve. Brown received two such reminders this month with the announcements that Professor Emeritus of Economics Peter Howitt won a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and Professor of International Security and Anthropology Ieva Jusionyte was named a MacArthur Fellow, commonly known as the “MacArthur Genius Grant.” These accomplishments affirm that rigorous, imaginative inquiry still matters despite the political static that tries to drown it out. This moment should serve as a guiding light for University researchers.
Washington’s rhetoric has framed universities as partisan, scientists as elitist and academic inquiry as detached from American life. Scholarship has become an unavoidably political activity. The result is a climate in which researchers — particularly those early in their careers — might question whether their work will continue to be funded, let alone appreciated by the public. But Howitt and Jusionyte’s recent recognition shows that excellent engagement with complex problems still finds its audience, even if that recognition comes decades later.
Howitt and one of his co-laureates Philippe Aghion, a professor of economics at the College de France, INSEAD and the London School of Economics, helped develop the Schumpeterian model of growth — a theory explaining how innovation drives long-term economic expansion. It’s a model that redefined how economists think about technological change, productivity and inequality. Howitt’s work is inconvenient for the status quo — after all, his model implies that growth depends on creative destruction, or replacing the old with the new. This is exactly the kind of thinking that can reshape policy debates and redefine our world as we know it.
Jusionyte’s work documenting the lives of migrants and border communities, reflects a different strength. Her research demonstrates that border security and violence exacerbates crises. While her scholarship doesn’t fit neatly into one discipline or align with the political preferences of those in power, it embodies the social responsibility that research at its best can carry. Inquiry can thrive outside institutional conventions and still make a profound public impact. Most importantly, Jusionyte’s work withstands the storm of border politics and demonstrates how academic research is a critical catalyst for civic dialogue.
Howitt and Jusionyte represent the twin purposes of academic research: to explain the world and to humanize it. Their recognition this year should remind researchers at Brown — especially those navigating reduced grants, political interference and public doubt — that discovery and empathy are not partisan acts. They are acts of persistence.
Research rarely earns immediate validation. But Howitt’s Nobel and Jusionyte’s MacArthur show us that society still depends on people willing to push past the current moment’s cynicism. The prizes reaffirm a fundamental truth: Knowledge matters, and so does the courage to pursue it when it is most discouraged. In an era when Brown researchers might feel under siege, let this be a moment of hope and motivation.
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