Adapted from a story by Jamie Saxon, Office of Communications, on the University homepage
Andrea Bernstein (Journalism) and Sean Wilentz (History) have been awarded the 2026-27 Berlin Prize fellowship. They are two of three Princeton faculty members selected for this year’s cohort, joining Ethan Kapstein (SPIA), and among 24 recipients nationwide.
The prestigious fellowship, awarded by the American Academy in Berlin, honors U.S.-based scholars, writers, artists, and composers “who represent the highest standard of excellence in their fields,” according to the award announcement. Fellows spend a semester at the Academy’s Hans Arnhold Center in Berlin’s Wannsee district, where they participate in public programs in addition to pursuing their scholarship.
Bernstein is a visiting lecturer in the Humanities Council and a Spring 2027 Ferris Professor of Journalism. She is an investigative journalist, author, podcaster, and longtime public radio reporter and editor.
During her fellowship in Fall 2026, Bernstein will work on a new book, “The Uses of Memory: Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, My Parents, and Me.” Part memoir, part investigative journalism, and part intellectual history, the book will examine her own work covering US politics as it converged with the work of her parents, Richard J. and Carol L. Bernstein, scholars of Arendt and Benjamin, respectively.
Wilentz is the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History and professor of history. He joined the Princeton faculty in 1979.
His fellowship supports his book project “The Fall of American Slavery,” a companion to his 2005 book “The Rise of American Democracy.” Together, he hopes they will comprise a “complete American political history” from the nation’s founding through the end of the Civil War and the ratification of the 13th Amendment. The book in progress is based on extensive original research as well as the scholarship of the last 60 years.
