The other week, the MacArthur Foundation announced its 22 fellows for 2024, each claiming $800,000 and recognition as a “genius.” If you’ve ever wondered how the winners are selected, you’re in luck: an insider just shared with me a transcript of the super-secret selection meeting.

Re: Transcript of the 2024 MacArthur Fellows Selection Meeting

Date: [Redacted]

Place: [Redacted]

Unidentified Committee Member 1: Good to see you all. I’d like to start by thanking the staff for their heroic work. Now, let’s see which finalists truly deserve to be forever known as geniuses.

[Chatter and scattered cheers]

UCM1: First up, you’ll see on the screen, we have a brilliant Shakespeare scholar. She’s discovered two lost folios and proven that the actual author of Shakespeare’s works was—

UCM2: Yawn! An apologist for the dominant culture who privileges written text and exalts dead white males?

UCM3: Yep. You can practically smell the MAGA.

UCM1: Anyone disagree? [Pause]. Okay, that’s adiós to Ms. Whitebread.

[Consternation and confusion]

UCM4: Excuse me! Excuse me! I must register my distress regarding the chair’s offensive appropriation of the Latinx salutation “adiós”.

[Extended commotion]

UCM1: I offer my deepest apologies. It’s only appropriate that I step down as chair.

[Shuffling of chairs]

UCM2: Okay, let’s proceed. Next, we have a multimedia artist creating intricate, densely layered, and visually dazzling works that center the culture and aesthetics of postcolonial spaces. In works such as the “Gangstas for Life” series, she explores ostentatious adornment—“bling”—as a strategy employed by working-class people to attain visibility. What say you all?

UCM3: Wonderful! I love what I’m hearing.

UCM5: This is what football enthusiasts call, I believe, a “slam dunk.” Yes!

UCM2: Anyone else? [Assorted cheers] Okay, that was easy. Up next, an agronomist who’s developed a rice hybrid that could triple yield and slash hunger across the globe.

UCM3: Do they work for the United Nations?

UCM4: The World Health Organization?

UCM2: Let’s see. Nope, he’s a research scientist at an American corporation. I should also note that the pronoun-identification field was left conspicuously blank.

UCM3: A heteronormative profiteer?! Ugh. Hard pass.

UCM2: Anyone feel otherwise? [Silence] Onward. Next up: an artist and performer who uses cabaret to address contemporary challenges, especially those facing queer communities. Their lounge acts celebrated protest, LGBTQ+ Pride Month, and the summer solstice.

UCM3: Just . . . wow!

UCM4: Agreed. Easy call.

UCM2: We’re unanimous? [Murmurs of approval] Okay, terrific. Our next nominee is an exobiologist who’s devised spacefaring equipment that can identify life from orbit. She’s discovered evidence of bacteriological life on Venus. Thoughts?

UCM5: Not a word about identity or the human condition.

UCM6: Truly. Plus, this sounds uncomfortably like an attempt to export settler colonialism to unblemished locales.

UCM2: Agreed. We’ll pass on our galactic imperialist. Next is a legal scholar whose work encompasses reproductive health, bioethics, and child welfare in order to shed light on systemic inequities within health and social service systems, amplify the voices of those affected, and boldly call for system transformation.

UCM5: Yes, oh, yes! Without hesitation.

UCM2: I see we’re agreed. Okay, now we’ve got a West Point graduate and former military physicist who has constructed an operational cold-fusion reactor. Adopted at scale, it could potentially eliminate 80 percent of carbon emissions in the next decade.

[Deep silence]

UCM4: A war-mongering physicist? We’re really considering Dr. Strangelove?

UCM2: Agreed. Honestly, how did he even make it to the finalist pool? Talk about a no-brainer.

[Confusion and consternation]

UCM6: Excuse me! Excuse me! I’m profoundly offended by the chair’s slight against the unbrained and zombie-afflicted community.

[General hubbub]

UCM2: I am deeply, profoundly sorry. I shall stand down as chair and resign from this committee.

[Chairs shuffling. Door slamming.]

UCM3: With your permission, to speed things along, I’d like to bundle up the next three highly appealing candidates. The first is a historian who explores the intersection of caste, gender, and sexuality through the lives of Dalit—or “Untouchable”—women to show how gender and sexuality are used to deny them personhood. The second is a writer of children’s literature whose books reflect the rich inner lives of kids of color, finding the humor, joy, and playfulness in tales of racism, economic inequity, and police brutality. The third is a filmmaker who tells stories about the daily lives of contemporary Native Americans, centering lives in transition and intergenerational relationships—as with his short film set in the waiting room of an Indian Health Services clinic.

UCM6: Wow! I’m crying at the beauty of it all. Yes, yes, and yes.

UCM4: Umm, question. Are we allowed to find playfulness and joy in racism and police brutality? That sounds odd.

UCM5: If you look in the file, it says the writer got dispensation from the Southern Poverty Law Center and an advisor to Kamala Harris.

UCM4: Well, that’s good enough for me.

UCM3: Other comments? [Silence] Terrific. Okay, here are two final candidates. The first is a computer-science type who’s devised an algorithm that’s supposedly been deployed to tame hostile AI. The second has developed “passive spectrum-spanning aerial-targeting software” that reportedly thwarted an invasion of earth by extraterrestrial aggressors. Thoughts?

UCM5: Tech bros are so tiresome. I’m pondering what either is doing on things that matter, like shattering the normative praxis of cultural hegemony.

UCM6: Well said.

UCM3: So that’s a no and a no, then. And a job well done. Can I just say how wonderful it is to work with a group that’s so discerning and committed to recognizing the change-making geniuses that matter?

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”