Professor Meares to Judge MacArthur Foundation Competition

Professor Tracey Meares will serve as an evaluating judge for a new competition recently launched that will award a $100 million grant to a single proposal designed to help solve a critical problem affecting people, places, or the planet. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s competition, called 100&Change, is open to organizations working in any field of endeavor anywhere. Applicants must identify both the problem they are trying to solve, as well as their proposed solution. Competitive proposals will be meaningful, verifiable, durable, and feasible.

As a judge for 100&Change, Professor Meares will evaluate valid proposals randomly assigned to her according to a strict set of criteria designed to favor proposals that maximize measurable impact in their chosen areas. More information about the judges and their evaluation methodology will be shared publicly via the competition website, www.100andchange.org. Participants submitting valid proposals will receive feedback from the judges.

Meares is the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law and Director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School. Before joining the faculty at Yale, Meares served as a professor at The University of Chicago Law School from 1995 to 2007. She was the first African American woman to be granted tenure at both law schools. Professor Meares’s teaching and research interests focus on criminal procedure and criminal law policy with a particular emphasis, at the moment, on policing. She has worked extensively with the federal government having served on the Committee on Law and Justice, a National Research Council Standing Committee of the National Academy of Sciences and the Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Science Advisory Board. In December 2014, President Obama named her as a member of his Task Force on 21st Century Policing. She has a B.S. in general engineering from the University of Illinois and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.

Together with Professor Tom Tyler, Meares directs the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School, which plays a central role, along with John Jay University and the Center for Policing Equity at UCLA in a new federal initiative to build trust and confidence in the criminal justice system.

“Solving society’s most pressing problems isn’t easy, but we believe it can be done,” said MacArthur President Julia Stasch. “Potential solutions may go unnoticed or under-resourced and are waiting to be brought to scale. Every three years, we plan to award $100 million to help make one of these solutions a reality. Through 100&Change, we want to inspire, encourage, and support other people’s ideas, here in our hometown Chicago, across the nation and around the world, about how to address major challenges and enable real progress toward a solution.”

100&Change will consider applications from across the United States and around the world. Nonprofit and for-profit organizations can apply, subject to eligibility rules. The competition will not accept applications from individuals or government agencies. For more information on the application process, visit https://www.100andchange.org/#home

The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. MacArthur is placing a few big bets that truly significant progress is possible on some of the world’s most pressing social challenges, including over-incarceration, global climate change, nuclear risk, and significantly increasing financial capital for the social sector. In addition to the MacArthur Fellows Program, the Foundation continues its historic commitments to the role of journalism in a responsible and responsive democracy; the strength and vitality of our headquarters city, Chicago; and generating new knowledge about critical issues. More information is at www.macfound.org.