Prof. Heidi Kitrosser Awarded Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship

Law School Professor Heidi Kitrosser has been awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. The highly competitive, national fellowship is awarded annually to about 175 scholars and artists selected from among more than 3,500 applicants. This is the first Guggenheim Fellowship awarded to a University of Minnesota Law School professor.

Kitrosser teaches and writes about government secrecy, the constitutional separation of powers, and speech and press freedoms. During the fellowship, she plans to begin work on a new book, tentatively titled, Dangerous Knowledge: Whistleblowers, Leakers, and the Power of Information.

“Professor Kitrosser earned this highly prestigious award through her steadfast commitment to the intellectual rigor and the creativity of her legal scholarship,” said Garry W. Jenkins, dean of the Law School. “The Guggenheim Fellowship program is renowned in the academy, and one of its special characteristics is that it honors creative artists, scholars in the humanities and social sciences, as well as scientific researchers. We are so proud of Heidi’s work and the tremendous honor she brings as a member of our faculty.”

In 2015, the University of Chicago Press published Reclaiming Accountability: Transparency, Executive Power, and the U.S. Constitution, a book by Kitrosser that won the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law/Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize. Kitrosser has also written numerous law review articles and testified before the U.S. Congress on problems associated with secret laws, and she serves on the boards of the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information and Public Record Media.

A member of the University of Minnesota law faculty since 2006, she received her J.D. from Yale Law School and her B.A. from University of California, Los Angeles. Following law school she clerked for Judge William Rea on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and for Judge Judith Rogers on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. 

The Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, now in its 93rd year, has granted more than $350 million in fellowships to more than 18,000 individuals, among whom are scores of Nobel laureates, Fields Medalists, Turing Award winners, poets laureate, members of the various national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, and other important, internationally recognized figures. From its inception, the foundation has sought to “add to the educational, literary, artistic, and scientific power of this country, and also to provide for the cause of better international understanding.”

Heidi Kitrosser