The Russell Sage Foundation is pleased to announce that three Margaret Olivia Sage (MOS) scholars will be in residence during the 2022-23 academic year: Thomas C. Holt (University of Chicago), Margaret Beale Spencer (University of Chicago), and Claude Steele (Stanford University). MOS scholars are nominated and selected by the board of trustees on the basis of their outstanding career research and mentoring accomplishments. 

Thomas C. Holt is the James Westfall Thompson Professor Emeritus of American and African American History at the University of Chicago. His research compares the experiences of people in the African diaspora, particularly those living in the Caribbean and the United States. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Holt is an award-winning author: The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938 was awarded the 1995 Elsa Goveia Prize by the Association of Caribbean Historians and Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina During Reconstruction was awarded the 1978 Charles S. Sydnor Prize by the Southern Historical Association.

Margaret Beale Spencer is the Marshall Field IV Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. She developed the phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory (P-VEST), a framework that examines resiliency, identity, and competence formation primarily in youths of color. Her Urban Resiliency Initiative emphasizes educational contexts, interrogates neighborhood policing encounters, and seeks to reduce vulnerability and increased resiliency. She received the American Psychological Association’s (2018) Lifetime Achievement Award. Spencer was a contributing author to the RSF edited volumes Securing the Future: Investing in Children from Birth to Collegeand Neighborhood Poverty Volume 1 and  Volume 2.

Claude M. Steele is the Lucie Stern Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University. He is a former member of RSF’s board of trustees and was chair of the board from 2017 to 2020. He developed the concept of stereotype threat and its effects on minority student academic performance. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. His 2010 book, Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us, summarizes years of research on stereotype threat and the underperformance of minority students in higher education. Steele was a contributing author to two RSF edited volumes: Cultural Divides: Understanding and Overcoming Group Conflict; and Engaging Cultural Differences: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies.