Grossmann Selected for 2025 Carnegie Fellowship IPPSR Director's project to focus on bipartisan cooperation
EAST LANSING, Mich., April 16, 2025 – The Carnegie Corporation of New York announced today that Dr. Matt Grossmann, Director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) at Michigan State University, has been selected as one of its 2025 Class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows. Twenty-six fellows will receive stipends of $200,000 each for research that seeks to understand how and why our society has become so polarized and how we can strengthen the forces of cohesion to fortify our democracy.
Grossmann’s project, a book tentatively titled "Policymaking for Realists: Bipartisan Progress in a Polarized Age", will argue that the way through our intense polarization is recognizing that our institutions require bipartisanship — not just occasional working coalitions but a broader acknowledgment that both sides are here to stay and have something to offer.
"I am honored to be included alongside such a great group of scholars as a 2025 Andrew Carnegie Fellow," said Grossmann. He continued, "This fellowship will support my research on enabling policymaking in an age of party polarization & parity."
“Through these fellowships, Carnegie is harnessing the unrivaled brainpower of our universities to help us to understand how our society has become so polarized,” said Carnegie president Dame Louise Richardson. Richardson continued, “Our future grantmaking will be informed by what we learn from these scholars as we seek to mitigate the pernicious effects of political polarization.”
Dr. Grossmann has been the director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) since 2016 and is a professor of political science at Michigan State University. He received a bachelor’s degree from Claremont McKenna College, a master’s degree in political science in 2002, and a doctorate in 2007 from the University of California, Berkeley.
Grossmann is the author of numerous books on political science, including Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics (2024), How Social Science Got Better: Overcoming Bias with More Evidence, Diversity, and Self-Reflection (2021), Red State Blues: How the Conservative Revolution Stalled in the States (2019), Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats (2016), Artists of the Possible: Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945 (2014), and The Not-So-Special Interests: Interest Groups, Public Representation, and American Governance (2012). He is coauthor of Campaigns and Elections, the leading elections textbook from W.W. Norton.
Grossmann is a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center in Washington, D.C., and host of The Science of Politics podcast. He has also published op-eds in The New York Times and The Washington Post.