John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity
Kwame Anthony Appiah is the 2024 recipient of the Kluge Prize. The Kluge Prize recognizes and celebrates work of the highest quality and greatest impact that advances understanding of the human experience.
2024 Kluge Prize Announcement
About Kwame Anthony Appiah
Kwame Anthony Appiah, the Silver Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, 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 feature that explores ethical approaches to solving interpersonal problems.
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Appiah earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and a doctorate from Cambridge University. Over the years, he has taught at Yale (1981-1986), Cornell (1986-1989), Duke (1990-1991), Harvard (1991-2002), and Princeton (as Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and with the University Center for Human Values, 2002-2014).
Appiah is the author of more than a dozen books. These include 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" (Oxford University Press, 1992), considered a canonical work in contemporary Africana studies.
Other books by Appiah include "Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race" (with Amy Gutmann, Princeton University Press, 1996); "The Ethics of Identity" (Princeton University Press, 2004); "Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers" (W. W. Norton, 2006); "Experiments in Ethics" (Harvard University Press, 2008); "The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen" (W. W. Norton, 2010); "Lines of Descent: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity" (Harvard University Press, 2014); "As If: Idealization and Ideals" (Harvard University Press, 2017); and "The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity" (Liveright, 2018). Appiah has also co-edited volumes with Henry Louis Gates Jr., including "Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience" (Oxford University Press, 1999).
Appiah is the current President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has served as President of the PEN America Center, 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 American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division.
Get to Know Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Work
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About the Prize
Established with an endowment provided by the late John W. Kluge, the Kluge Prize recognizes and celebrates work of the highest quality and greatest impact that advances understanding of the human experience.
Nomination and Selection
The Library of Congress invites nominations for the Kluge Prize from knowledgeable individuals in colleges, universities, government agencies, embassies, and research institutions across the globe, as well as from independent scholars and writers and from library curators. Nominations must be made in writing and explanatory documentation is helpful. Self-nominations are not accepted.