The Ralph J. Bunche Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor the best scholarly work in political science that explores the phenomenon of ethnic and cultural pluralism.
Sally A. Nuamah is a professor at Northwestern University. She is an award-winning scholar, advocate, founder, and filmmaker who explores issues at the intersection of race, gender, public policy, and political behavior. She completed her Ph.D. in Political Science at Northwestern University in June 2016. She has held fellowships and faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, Princeton University, and Duke University. Her first book, How Girls Achieve, has been the recipient of multiple national and international awards. Dr. Nuamah is also the creator of an award-winning scholarship organization and film focused on girls’ education. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes Magazine’s “30 under 30 in Education,” awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, aka “the Brainy Award,” and in 2021, named a recipient of the Marilyn J. Gittell Activist Scholar Award from the Urban Affairs Association. Her second book, Closed for Democracy, was released in 2022.
Citation from the Award Committee:
In a systematic and persuasive analysis, Nuamah traces the impact of public school closures on civic life within Black communities in major urban centers. Closed for Democracy: How Mass School Closure Undermines the Citizenship of Black Americans offers a variety of qualitative and quantitative evidence to show that mobilization to support of local schools can leave activists feeling fatigued when their efforts are met with a lack of democratic transparency and responsiveness – an effect the author refers to as “collective participatory debt.” Closed for Democracy engages with very important questions concerning equity in public services and community wellbeing in ways that is accessible and informative not only for scholars and practitioners, but also the wider public. The book is timely and very well researched and therefore a very worthy recipient of the 2023 Ralph J. Bunche Award.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Catherine E. De Vries (chair) of Bocconi University, Dr. Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera of George Mason University, and Dr. James A. McCann of Purdue University.
