Ned Blackhawk Named 2025 Recipient of the Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square
Newport RI, February 26, 2025—Dr. Ned Blackhawk, a National Book Award-winning historian, has been named the 2025 recipient of the Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square. Awarded since 2013, the prize honors storytellers whose work has a meaningful, positive impact on the public dialogue.
Blackhawk is the Howard R. Lamar Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. He is the author of “Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the early American West,” a study of the American Great Basin which garnered half a dozen professional prizes, including the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize from the Organization of American Historians. Blackhawk has led the establishment of two fellowships, one for American Indian Students to attend the Western History Association’s annual conference, the other for doctoral students working on American Indian Studies dissertations at Yale named after Henry Roe Cloud. He was honored with the National Book Award for Nonfiction for his book, “The Rediscovery of America” in 2023.
“As I read ‘The Rediscovery of America’ and revisited the story of America I thought I knew so well, I was blown away by the scope of his research and the power of his work to compel a reconsideration of the American story, simply by bringing native populations back into that story,” said Jim Ludes, Executive Director of the Pell Center. “Students, scholars, citizens, everyone who reads his work will benefit from the contributions Ned Blackhawk makes to understanding not just the past, but the world we live in today,” he added.
“I am deeply humbled to be in the shared company as the previous recipients of the prize,” said Blackhawk. “I’ve always felt the history of our country never sufficiently recognized the indigenous peoples of North America.” He continued, “As a student, it became clear to me that the study of American history had an ineffective method for making sense of native history, and that’s changed a lot in recent decades with collaboration with tribal communities.” He describes himself as “an interpreter” of the field of native history and added he hopes “The Rediscovery of America” invites others to learn more and expand on this work.
Blackhawk was featured on an episode of “Story in the Public Square” that was broadcast on public television and SiriusXM Satellite Radio’s POTUS channel in October 2023.
He is the eleventh recipient of the Pell Center Prize following globally renown historian Tim Snyder who was recognized in 2024 for his scholarship on 20th century autocracy provides a stark and timely reminder of the challenges facing democracy in every era. In 2023, acclaimed author Azar Nafisi, known for her bestselling “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” won the prize for her celebration of the liberating potential of literature while recounting the oppression of the Islamic Revolution in her native Iran. In 2021, the prize went to Michael Paul Williams, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Richmond Times Dispatch, whose reporting led to the removal of Confederate statues from public places in the former capital of the Confederacy. It was awarded in 2019 when Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert was recognized for her reporting on humanity’s impact on all other life on the planet. Two-time Pulitzer winner Dana Priest received the inaugural prize in 2013; Emmy-winning screenwriter and actor Danny Strong was the 2014 winner; Lisa Genova, the best-selling author of “Still Alice,” was honored in 2015; Pulitzer-winning photographer Javier Manzano won in 2016; filmmaker Daphne Matziaraki, whose documentary “4.1 Miles” was nominated for an Oscar, was honored in 2017; and in 2018, Pulitzer-winner and New York Times staff writer Dan Barry won. The prize was not awarded in 2020 or 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Founded in February 2012, Story in the Public Square is an initiative to celebrate, study and tell stories that matter. A partnership of the Pell Center at Salve Regina University and The Providence Journal, the program produces the five-time Telly Award-winning show of the same name broadcast more than 500 times each week on public television stations across the country and heard five times every weekend on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. channel.
Find Story in the Public Square:
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