UCLA School of Law professor Rick Hasen has been awarded a 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship to support his work on his forthcoming book Unbent Arc: The Rise and Decline of American Democracy 1964-2024 (Princeton University Press, 2028).

Each year, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation “offers fellowships to exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions.” Guggenheim Fellowships are among the most prestigious honors for people in academia and elsewhere who conduct this pathbreaking work.

This year, the foundation awarded fellowships to 223 people from 55 fields of study and 97 academic institutions, throughout the United States, Canada, and eight other countries. Hasen is among five faculty members across the UCLA campus who earned a Guggenheim Fellowship this year.

As a Guggenheim Fellow, Hasen will continue to work on his book, which is the natural next step in his career as one of the most authoritative and impactful scholars of election law and democracy in the nation today.

“I’m beyond grateful for the recognition and support of the Guggenheim Foundation for my work explaining how the United States emerged as a democracy in the 1960s, and what threatens free and fair elections today,” he says.

Hasen holds the Gary T. Schwartz Endowed Chair Law at UCLA, where he also serves as a professor of political science. He is the founding director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, which promotes research, collaboration, and advocacy that is aimed at ensuring continued free and fair elections in the United States. A prolific author and frequent commentator in the national media, he has published six books on the law and democracy, including A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2024).

A 1991 graduate of UCLA Law, Hasen earned his B.A., with highest honors, at UC Berkeley, and his J.D., M.A., and Ph.D. in political science at UCLA.