Historian Beth Lew-Williams has been announced as a recipient of the 2025 Dan David Prize. This prestigious award recognizes “outstanding scholarship that illuminates the past and seeks to anchor public discourse in a deeper understanding of history.” Lew-Williams is among nine early and mid-career researchers worldwide to receive this honor, which includes a $300,000 award “in recognition of their achievements and to support their future endeavors,” according to the prize announcement.
Lew-Williams serves as a professor of history and director of the Program in Asian American Studies at Princeton University, where she has taught since 2014. Her expertise lies in Asian American history, with a focus on migration and race. The award citation highlighted her “rigorous yet imaginative scholarship that uncovers the unique stories of racial exclusion and oppression against Asian Americans, as well as the lived experiences of Chinese migrants.”
Expressing her gratitude for the recognition, Lew-Williams stated, “I’m grateful that the foundation is investing in the study of the human past because I think we’re desperately in need of historical perspectives right now.” She added, “I see this as an opportunity to bring attention to the long history of nativist policies and their impact on immigrants’ lives.”
The Dan David Prize is endowed by the Dan David Foundation, based in Liechtenstein and headquartered at Tel Aviv University. Winners are chosen by a global committee of historians through an open nomination process.
Lew-Williams authored “The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion and the Making of the Alien in America” (Harvard University Press, 2018) and has a forthcoming book titled “John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law” (Harvard University Press, 2025), supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant.
In addition to her recent accolade, Lew-Williams was honored with Princeton University’s Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award for undergraduate teaching excellence in 2024. She has also been recognized as a fellow by both the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her book “The Chinese Must Go” received both the Ray Allen Billington Prize and Ellis W. Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians in 2019.
Lew-Williams holds an A.B. from Brown University and earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University.
