Orlando Patterson

The prize citation for Dr. Patterson’s 2023 Barry Prize reads:

Spanning the breadth of history and deploying methods drawn from across the social sciences, Orlando Patterson’s magisterial scholarship has revolutionized our understanding of the ubiquitous realities of slavery, bigotry, and poverty. By challenging inherited models of what these afflictions are, how they work, and what their impact is, he has equipped us to confront them with greater depth of understanding and work more effectively toward their elimination. The Academy honors Dr. Patterson’s distinguished contributions to humanity’s progress toward the day when all men and women will be free at last.

Orlando Patterson is John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He was educated at the University of the West Indies (Bsc, Econ) and The London School of Economics (PhD, Sociology). He studies the history of slavery and freedom, race and inequality in the Americas, and social and economic development in Jamaica. His nine academic books and three novels include Slavery and Social Death; Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, which won the American National Book Award; and The Confounding Island. He served as special advisor in social policy and development for Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley and currently chairs the Jamaica Education Transformation Commission. He has discussed urgent policy issues at the White House with two American presidents: Gerald Ford and Barack Obama. He was a founding member of Cultural Survival, an advocacy group for the rights of indigenous peoples. A Guggenheim fellow, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has served on the board of Freedom House. In 2020 he was awarded the Order of Merit by Jamaica.

November 2023