The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the 24 winners of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, better known as the “genius” grants, on Tuesday.
The lucky winners will receive $625,000 — no strings attached — decided by a committee without the knowledge of the winners.
The 2017 winner list includes a wide array of people from a historian in Cambridge, Massachusetts to an architect in New York City. Two of the winners are from Chicago — photographer Dawoud Bey and community leader Rami Nashashibi.
Nashashibi, the co-founder and executive director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, joins Morning Shift to discuss his organization that works for social change on the South Side.