The Carey McWilliams Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor major journalistic contributions to society’s understanding of politics.
Citation from the Award Committee:
The American Political Science Association’s Carey McWilliams Award honors “a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.” This year’s winner is Jamelle Bouie. Since joining the New York Times as a columnist in 2019, Jamelle Bouie has consistently worked to redefine what a newspaper opinion column can be. Newspaper columns can sometimes run the risk of merely trying to improve on (or worse, simply restating) the political arguments being made by one side or the other in the most prominent political debates of the day. Bouie has consistently rejected this model. His columns stand out by offering readers historical and academic context for what is currently happening in the United States. His work connects readers to scholarship in political science, history, sociology, African American studies and other academic disciplines. Like any columnist, not all readers will agree with Bouie’s theses and academic interpretations all of the time. But readers consistently come away much more informed about the history and the major academic research on the topics he covers.
As an example, Bouie columns in recent years have covered the history of political violence in post-Reconstruction America, John Dewey and the American culture of democracy, Kevin Phillips and the history of the “Southern strategy,” the concept of minority veto points in U.S. history and in political theory, federalism as it has historically applied to slavery and abortion policy, the ideology of the leaders of the 1963 march on Washington, the history of how U.S. schools have depicted slavery (see also), and an analysis of Abraham Lincoln’s 1838 Lyceum Address. These are just a few representative examples.
As you can see, these are not typical topics for an op-ed columnist. Bouie is reinventing the role of the newspaper political columnist. He has elevated the form, making it more intellectual, encompassing a longer historical sweep, while keeping it accessible to readers. For these reasons, we are happy to recognize him with the 2025 Carey McWilliams Award.
Jamelle Bouie is a columnist for the New York Times. He covers history and politics.
Before the Times, Jamelle was chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He began his career at The American Prospect magazine and also spent time as a writer for The Daily Beast. Jamelle has also contributed essays to volumes such as “Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019” and “The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story.” In 2021, he received the Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism and in 2024 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Science.
Jamelle attended the University of Virginia, where he graduated in 2009 with degrees in political and social thought, and government.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Jonathan Ladd (Chair) of Georgetown University, Dr. Jessica Feezell of the University of New Mexico, and Dr. John Lapinski of the University of Pennsylvania
Congratlations
“… Jamelle Bouie has consistently worked to redefine what a newspaper opinion column can be.”
Spot on! I don’t think anyone had ever thought that pulling a secondary source of history or social science off the shelf, summarizing or quoting at length the intro chapter, and then asserting that whatever Republicans are doing right now is part of this “long history” would make a good op-ed column!