Berggruen Prize Honors 2026 Laureate Michael Sandel at Award Ceremony in Cambridge, MA

Renowned political philosopher and Harvard University professor Michael Sandel was awarded the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy & Culture during a ceremony at Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts on April 13, 2026.

Professor Sandel was recognized for his lifetime achievements both articulating and interrogating the fundamental moral and civic questions central to democratic life. In his signature Socratic style, Sandel has consistently amplified philosophy beyond the academy and into the global public sphere. As such, he has made philosophy not only accessible, but also necessary.

During the annual award ceremony, Nicolas Berggruen, Founder and Chairman of the Berggruen Institute, emphasized the Prize’s aspiration to honor the key thinkers of our time whose ideas are shaping the present and future. He congratulated Professor Sandel for this deserving recognition and presented him with the Berggruen Prize trophy. Nicole Grunwald Silver, Director of the Berggruen Prize and Berggruen Prize Essay Competition, emphasized the urgency Sandel places on repairing the present and cultivating the common good to reimagine what a more democratic and morally renewed society could look like. Yuk Hui, philosopher of technology and Chair of the Berggruen Prize Jury stated, “Professor Sandel’s work has left a profound mark on the global intellectual landscape. His critiques of neoliberalism, meritocratic ideology, and populism speak to the most urgent questions of our time.”

He then summarized Professor Sandel’s life’s work as “inviting citizens to confront together the moral contours of their collective life.” This notion, of collective discourse and participation, would be returned to throughout the evening as a focal point of both praise and conversation.

The ceremony was anchored by a wide-ranging conversation between Professor Sandel and former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who is also a former student of Sandel’s. Their exchange spanned his career, including his early critiques of Rawlsian liberalism to his prescient concerns about market globalization and a populist backlash found in his book, Democracy's Discontent, which was published in 1996.

Concerning meritocracy, a central focus of his more recent work, Professor Sandel offered a distinctively clarifying thought: that in our public life, we should not "inhale too deeply of our own success," and that our best interest lies in recognizing the luck, the community, and the teachers that make any achievement possible. He closed on a note of albeit tempered hope: "It's very hard to be optimistic looking at the political scene," he said, "but I do think it's possible to find hope." Professor Sandel finds this hope in a public hunger he encounters everywhere, especially among young people, for a better quality of public discourse. He urges us to never cease asking the most fundamental human questions of meaning, purpose, and values.