This is guest post by the Office of Communications media relations team.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, the internationally recognized philosopher, scholar and author, will receive the 2024 John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today. The prize recognizes individuals whose outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences has shaped public affairs and civil society.
Appiah is the Silver professor of philosophy and law at New York University. He is internationally recognized for his contributions to the study of philosophy as it relates to ethics, language, nationality and race.
Appiah also writes “The Ethicist” in The New York Times Magazine, a column and newsletter that explores ethical approaches to solving interpersonal problems and moral dilemmas.
“Dr. Appiah’s philosophical work is elegant, groundbreaking and highly respected,” Hayden said. “His writing about race and identity transcends predictable categories and encourages dialogue across traditional divisions. He is an ideal recipient for the 2024 Kluge Prize, and we were thrilled to select him for this award.”
The Library is developing programming on the theme of “Thinking Together” that will showcase Appiah’s work for a public audience.
Appiah earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and a doctorate from Cambridge University. Over the years, he has taught at Yale, Cornell, Duke, Harvard and Princeton universities.
He is the author of more than a dozen books, including academic studies of the philosophy of language, a textbook introduction to contemporary philosophy and “In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture,” considered a canonical work in contemporary Africana studies.
Since the 1990s, Appiah’s work has been widely regarded as having deepened the understanding of ideas around identity and belonging, concepts that remain deeply consequential.
Debra Satz, who served on the Library’s Scholars Council, called Appiah a “giant who influenced the academy and beyond.”
Satz is the Vernon R. and Lysbeth Warren Anderson dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University and the Marta Sutton Weeks professor of ethics in society.
“His work is of unusually broad scope, ranging from technical work in the philosophy of language to core ethical issues about identity to questions of the value of work,” Satz said. “What unites his writings on all of these diverse topics is a consistent wide-ranging humanity and a courageous refusal to fit his views into any narrow boxes.”
Scholars Council member Martha Jones, the Society of Black Alumni presidential professor and professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, said Appiah’s work is of “tremendous breadth of interest, expertise and engagement, from scholarly to serious popular writing.”
“Kwame Anthony Appiah moves effortlessly between academic and public discussions on difficult topics, such as race, identity, privilege and power,” said Timothy Frye, the Marshall D. Shulman professor of post-Soviet foreign policy at Columbia University and Scholars Council member. “His academic work is rooted in philosophy, but the range of topics that he has addressed in his research and public writing is astonishing.”
Frye further noted that that “while many scholars are satisfied probing hard and important questions without taking the next step of offering guidance for how to solve them, Appiah is unafraid to offer solutions that recognize the complexity of the problems under study.”
Other books by Appiah include “The Ethics of Identity,” “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers,” “Experiments in Ethics,” “The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen,” “Lines of Descent: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity,” “As If: Idealization and Ideals,” and “The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity.” He was coauthor of “Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race” with Amy Gutmann.
Appiah has also co-edited volumes with Henry Louis Gates Jr., including “Africana: The Encyclopedia of African and African-American Experience.”
Appiah is the current president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has served as president of the PEN America Center, as a member of the advisory board of the National Museum for African Art, as chair of the board of the American Council of Learned Societies and as president of the Modern Language Association and of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association.
Awarded every two years, the Kluge Prize highlights the value of researchers who communicate beyond the scholarly community and have had a major impact on social and political issues. The prize comes with a $500,000 award.
Appiah joins a prestigious group of past prizewinners, including, most recently, historian George Chauncey, a trailblazer in the study of American LGBTQ+ history; Danielle Allen, renowned scholar of justice, citizenship and democracy; and historian Drew Gilpin Faust, former president of Harvard University.
Hayden selected Appiah from a short list of finalists following a request for nominations from scholars and leaders all over the world and a three-stage review process by experts in and outside of the Library.
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Comments (2)
Would like to attend for your kind words.
Are you with the United Nations. The currency has to spent accordingly if it’s a grant. I hope it a federal grant! We got people struggling in America and can’t get access like the rest of the world!