Ahilan Arulanantham ’99 Named 2016 MacArthur Fellow

Human rights lawyer Ahilan Arulanantham ’99 was one of 23 people to receive 2016 MacArthur Fellowships. The Fellows each received a $625,000 grant for their exceptional creativity and potential for future contributions to their fields.

Arulanantham is director of advocacy and legal director at the ACLU of Southern California in Los Angeles. His work focuses on expanding the rights of immigrant detainees. Through his work on a 2013 class action suit Rodriguez v Robbins, hundreds of people in immigration proceedings were able to leave detention while waiting for their cases to be adjudicated. Read more about Arulanantham on the MacArthur site.

The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.