Genius Move by the MacArthur Foundation

Once again, the MacArthur Fellowships — aka “genius grants” — were announced. And once again, I didn’t get one.

That’s OK. I consider the 25 years I spent as a tenure-track, then tenured, faculty member even better. The MacArthur Fellows get $125,000 a year for five years, no strings attached. That’s sweet, but does it top complete job security forever, a less-than-taxing course load, regular sabbaticals, excellent benefits, and summers and a long winter break off each year? I think not.

With that in mind, I’ve always found it puzzling that the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, in a coals-to-Newcastle move, so frequently selects faculty members: This year, 13 out of 25 Fellows have college or university affiliations, and six of the 13 are from Cal Tech, MIT (2), Princeton (2), or Yale. You’d think the foundation’s vaunted network of anonymous scouts would be able to rustle up a roster of exceptional writers, artists, and thinkers who are on their own and really need the support.

The New York Times article about this year’s recipients was headlined “MacArthur Foundation Announces 25 New ‘Genius’ Fellowships.” And that word, genius, has been associated with the program ever since the first group of Fellows was announced in 1981. (That class — which included such no-names as A.R. Ammons, Joseph Brodsky, Robert Coles, Stephen Jay Gould, Derek Walcott, and Robert Penn Warren — established the low-hanging-fruit selection model.) One of  the nonfamous fellows that year, Elma Lewis, a performing-arts educator, said, “‘It seems to me I felt the same the day after I was a genius as I did the day before.”

Even before then, virtually every article about the program has used the g-word and then stated that the foundation does not use or endorse it. In 1980, the Times quoted the then-director, Gerald Freund: “I abjure the term ‘genius’ — I’m not certain how one defines it. I prefer to speak of talented people.” And the current director, Cecilia Conrad, wrote in a 2013 Washington Post Op-Ed, “The foundation does not use the name ‘genius grant’; the news media coined that nickname in 1981, when we named our first class of fellows, and it stuck.”

It’s brilliant branding, really: The foundation is able to wash its hands of the crass “genius” designation, yet is universally known by it. It calls to mind the most genius brand of all time, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!™, on whose packages the word Butter is by far the biggest. Or the way plant-based liquids like almond milk are known and used as dairy products even though they aren’t. (The Food and Drug Administration is currently trying to prevent the “milk” designation from being used by these products. “An almond doesn’t lactate, I will confess,” Commissioner of Food and Drugs Scott Gottlieb said in July.)

However, the blame-genius-on-the-media narrative is not the whole story. A May 1981 Times article attributed the term to other philanthropic organizations: “The ‘search for geniuses,’ as the foundation community labeled the program….”  And pace Cecilia Conrad, it predates 1981. The 1980 Times piece that quoted Gerald Freund abjuring “genius” implied that the word’s origin was closer to home — specifically, from the mouth or pen of Roderick MacArthur, whose father, John D. MacArthur, funded the enterprise, and who spearheaded the MacArthur Fellows program. The Times had this sentence: “The young MacArthur’s surprise proposal that the new foundation spend its wealth subsidizing individual ‘geniuses’ stirred something of a sensation in the staid world of philanthropy.”

That line suggests but doesn’t prove that Roderick MacArthur — who died in 1984 — used “genius.” I suspect there’s a smoking-gun letter or memo from him that one day will turn up.

Meanwhile, a private message to MacArthur scouts: I’ve retired from teaching, so keep me in mind for next year. I’m no genius but that doesn’t matter. Right?