Cultural Freedom Prize
Cultural Freedom awards and fellowships are granted to individuals in recognition of their extraordinary and courageous work promoting social justice and the human right to freedom of imagination, inquiry, and full cultural expression. These individuals are typically advocates for education justice, prison reform and abolition, environmental justice and protection, social and economic justice, human rights, and press and journalistic freedom. A Cultural Freedom Prize is an award for a lifetime of remarkable achievement.
We invite you to learn more about each of the extraordinary individuals who have been awarded the Prize for Cultural Freedom.
Applications and nominations for the cultural freedom prize will not be accepted.
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2020 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize Awarded to Mike Davis
Mike Davis, professor emeritus of creative writing at UC Riverside, joined the San Diego chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality in 1962 at age 16 and the struggle for racial and social equality has remained... -
2020 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize Awarded to Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences and Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Co-founder of many grassroots organizations including the... -
2020 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize Awarded to Angela Y. Davis
Angela Y. Davis is Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies Departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Davis grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and has been an activist and... -
2017 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize awarded to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades, working with Indigenous communities on sovereignty and... -
2014 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize awarded to Bryan Stevenson
Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent... -
2006 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize awarded to Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk (1946-2020) was a celebrated British foreign correspondent and author. Based in Beirut for over 40 years, he covered the conflict in Northern Ireland, the Israeli invasions of Lebanon, the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War... -
2005 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize awarded to Dr. Cornel West
Dr. Cornel West is a philosopher, author, activist, social critic, and one of America’s most vital public intellectuals. He has published more than 20 books, including the ground-breaking Race Matters; Democracy Matters; a memoir Brother West... -
2003 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize awarded to Dr. Helen Caldicott
Widely regarded as one of the most articulate and passionate advocates of citizen action to remedy the nuclear and environmental crises, Dr. Helen Caldicott has devoted the last 30 years to an international campaign to educate... -
2002 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize awarded to Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy is an Indian author, actor, and political activist. Her debut novel, The God of Small Things, received the 1997 Booker Prize, and her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, was longlisted for the... -
2001 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize awarded to Mahmoud Darwish
Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was one of the most acclaimed poets in the Arab world. Widely regarded as the Palestinian national poet, he published more than 30 books of poetry and eight books of prose, including The Adam... -
2000 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize awarded to Claudia Andujar
Claudia Andujar was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland in 1931, and spent her childhood in Romania and Hungary. In 1956 she immigrated to Brazil. A photography project documenting the way of life of the Carajá Indians in... -
1999 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize awarded to Eduardo Galeano
Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015), born in Montevideo, Uruguay, was an essayist, journalist, historian, and activist, as well as one of Latin America’s most beloved literary figures. Galeano’s books include the trilogy Memory of Fire; The Book of...