book on race and ethnicity and the Benchmark Book Award from the Center for Judicial Studies. Along with her husband, she also won the 2004 Peter Shaw Memorial Award given by the National Association of Scholars. She wrote for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the (London) Times Literary Supplement. She often spoke to the media about voting rights, education, and other issues and appeared on Good Morning America, Fox News Sunday, and This Week with George Stephanopoulos, among other places. Because of their differing opinions on civil rights, President Bill Clinton chose her as one of three authors to participate in his first "town meeting" on race in Akron, Ohio, on December 3, 1997. She was part of a small group that met with the President again in the Oval Office on December 19, 1997. As vice-chair of the Civil Rights Commission, she rebutted other conservatives who disputed the dropping of voter intimidation charges against a duo from the New Black Panther Party. In an interview with CBS News, Thernstrom said that she believes "the evidence is extremely weak" that the Department of Justice has discriminated against white voters. Thernstrom explained her opinion on the case in an article for National Review, in which she refers to the New Black Panther Party case as "very small potatoes". About Barack Obama-appointee Eric Holder, she stated, "There are plenty of grounds on which to sharply criticize the attorney general — his handling of terrorism questions, just for starters — but this particular overblown attack threatens to undermine the credibility of his conservative critics." Her daughter is the writer Melanie Thernstrom. Her son is Samuel Thernstrom, founder of the Energy Innovation Reform Project (EIRP), a nonprofit organization that promotes the development of advanced energy technologies. Shortly after testing negative for COVID-19, she died April 10, 2020, in Arlington, Virginia. She was 83 years old. Awards 1988, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Whose Votes Count?: Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights References Further reading "Abigail M. Thernstrom." in Contemporary Authors (Gale, 2004) online Holmes, Steven A. "Affirmative action's unlikely foes." New York Times Jan 8, 1998, p. A8 Loury, G.G. "The Conservative Line on Race: America in Black and White, by Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom." The Atlantic Monthly 280 (Nov. 1997): 144–154. online Shatz, Adam. "The Thernstroms in Black and White" The American Prospect (Dec.