Cardoso Honored with $1 Million Prize

May 14, 2012

Former president of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a distinguished sociologist and public figure with longtime ties to the Kellogg Institute, is the 2012 recipient of the John W. Kluge Prize.

The prize, which carries a monetary award of $1 million, is presented by the Library of Congress for lifetime intellectual achievement in the humanities and social sciences. The honor will be formally presented in a Washington DC ceremony on July 10.

An influential academic before he entered public life, Cardoso established the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Research (CEBRAP), which became one of the region’s most important think tanks. He served on the Kellogg Institute’s Advisory Board in its earliest years (1982–1986), drawn by the leadership of the Institute’s first academic director, Guillermo O’Donnell, with whom he had worked in both Chile and Brazil.

With then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Cardoso received the Kellogg Institute’s Notre Dame Prize for Distinguished Public Service in Latin America in 2003. The two men were honored for their visionary work to consolidate democracy in Brazil and to improve the lives of the poor.

Cardoso’s wife, the anthropologist Ruth Cardoso (1930–2008), was a visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute in 1988.