Clemson professor Drew Lanham: the "genius" in his MacArthur Foundation grant is freedom to "do me"

Walter Edgar's Journal

Joseph Drew Lanham, onrnithologist, naturalist, and writer, and now a 2022 MacArthur Fellow, in Clemson, S.C.(John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

Edgefield native Drew Lanham wasn’t entirely sure what the phone call from Chicago was about. And, after he heard what the person on the phone had to say, he wasn’t altogether sure he believed the news: Drew had just won a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the “genius grant.”

The MacArthur Foundation says that “The 2022 MacArthur Fellows are architects of new modes of activism, artistic practice, and citizen science. They are excavators uncovering what has been overlooked, undervalued, or poorly understood. They are archivists reminding us of what should survive.”

Drew Lanham, the Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University, talks with Walter Edgar about his life, his work, his writing, and about what may lie hopes to achieve through his work.