The Hanes Walton, Jr. Career Award is presented by the American Political Science Association (APSA) in recognition of a political scientist whose lifetime of distinguished scholarship has made significant contributions to our understanding of racial and ethnic politics and illuminates the conditions under which diversity and intergroup tolerance thrive in democratic societies.
Vincent Hutchings is the Hanes Walton Jr. Collegiate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and a Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research. In 2020, he was also appointed as a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor. He received his Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Hutchings conducts research and teaches courses in Black politics, American public opinion and voting behavior, and racial attitudes. In 2003, he published a book entitled Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability, from Princeton University Press. His research has primarily focused on the ways in which political campaigns and the media frame information about racial issues in order to activate and make politically relevant the voters’ sympathies and/or antipathies for particular racial groups. Professor Hutchings has received multiple grants from the National Science Foundation. He was one of the Principal Investigators of the American National Election Study from 2010-2017. In 2012, Professor Hutchings was elected as a Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). In 2022, Professor Hutchings was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
Citation from the Award Committee:
Vincent Hutchings has had a tremendous influence on the field of political science, and his contributions have made a lasting mark on the study of racial and ethnic politics and public opinion as well as the professional trajectories of his students. Hutchings has accomplished this through his own pioneering scholarship and theoretical innovations around racial prejudice and political psychology and attitudes, but also by building up the key infrastructures to support these advances. For example, his longstanding commitment to develop our ability to examine political life is seen through his contributions as Principle Investigator of the longest running time series survey data collection, the American National Election Studies, from 2010 to 2017 as well as his leading several efforts to establish better samples within minoritized communities like the National Study of Ethnic Pluralism and Politics. He is a faithful member of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, and he did an exemplary job as president of the Midwest Political Science Association.
Professor Hutchings’ many leading articles as well as his book, Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability, have yielded important discoveries and advanced our understanding and examination of group politics and attitudes, the political significance of (and measurement of) racial prejudice, democratic accountability, public knowledge, political communication and cues, and racial policy preferences. They have become mainstays on syllabi and in classrooms.
Professor Hutchings has developed several cohorts of scholars through his steadfast mentorship of students who are now major leaders of public opinion, inequality, racial politics in their own right: including Ismail White, Tasha Philpot, Antoine Banks, Spencer Piston, Ashley Jardina, LaFleur Stephens, Nicole Yadon, Hakeem Jefferson, as well as dozens of others, even at the undergraduate level (including Lauren Davenport). Professor Hutchings was described as a tireless and generous advisor, whose training of students was patterned on collaboration and involvement in all aspects of the research process.
Professor Hutchings has continued to shape and expand our discipline through his leadership, scholarship, mentorship, and service. In recognition of his creating an environment for the flourishing of racial politics research, survey data collection, and examination of issues at the heart of democratic and racial politics, Hutchings is exceedingly deserving of the 2023 Hanes Walton, Jr. Career award.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Vesla Mae Weaver (chair) of Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Sekou Franklin of Middle Tennessee State University, and Dr. Gladys Mitchell-Walthour of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
