Andrew Selee Awarded Prestigious Carnegie Fellowship

Wilson Center Executive Vice President Andrew Selee has been named a 2017 Carnegie Fellow, one of the highest scholarly distinctions in the social sciences.

Selee is one of 35 Fellows chosen this year and is the only member of the group whose primary affiliation is a think tank. He will receive a stipend of $200,000 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to complete his groundbreaking study of the ways in which Mexico shapes daily life in the United States.

“The Andrew Carnegie Fellowship is an amazing opportunity that will allow me to dedicate time to my research and writing. I think Americans will be surprised by the many ways in which Mexico touches their lives every day, from finances to film. I hope my book will shed light on a story that most of us don’t know,” Selee said.

Starting at the Wilson Center as an Associate in the Latin American Program, Selee went on to become the founding Director of the Mexico Institute, a position he held from 2003 to 2012. Selee served as Vice President of Programs before he was named the Wilson Center’s Executive Vice President in 2014.

Selee has written extensively on U.S.-Mexico relations, Mexican politics, U.S. immigration policy, organized crime, and democracy in Latin America, helping Wilson’s Mexico Institute grow into a leading venue for scholarship and dialogue. He began his Carnegie Fellowship project at the Center.  

Selee’s recent publications include What Should Think Tanks Do? A Strategic Guide for Policy Impact (Stanford University Press, 2013); Mexico and the United States: The Politics of Partnership (Lynne Rienner, 2013); and Mexico's Democratic Challenges (Stanford University Press/Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010).

Quoted extensively in domestic and international media, Selee is also an adjunct professor of Government at Johns Hopkins University and of International Affairs at George Washington University.

Selee recently accepted a new position of President of the Migration Policy Institute. He will begin that post in August.

Wilson Center Director, President and CEO Jane Harman congratulated Selee on his accolade and said:

"Andrew leaves us after 17 years to head an impressive think tank which focuses on immigration--the Migration Policy Institute--a friend of the Center's. Andrew goes with fondest wishes and with impressive skills, some of which he would agree were nurtured at the Wilson Center."

Selee is the eighth Wilson Center scholar to have been named a Carnegie Fellow since 2015.