Dalai Lama honoured as 15th Recipient of Spendlove Prize

Dharamsala, September 22, 2022: Tibetan Spiritual leader His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has been awarded the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance. A pre-recorded showing of the presentation on September 26, will celebrate the 15th prize recipient, Informed the office of Dalai Lama in Dharamsala today.

The press release said that Sherrie Spendlove, who established the Spendlove Prize at UC Merced informed about this choice by saying “In our increasingly politically-divided and highly confrontational world, the messages of kindness, peace, compassion and forgiveness of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama are helpful, not only in advancing sustainable social justice using non-violent methods, but also as a path to better interpersonal relations and a more meaningful life.”

"In naming the Dalai Lama the latest recipient of the Spendlove Prize, UC Merced recognizes a global spiritual leader committed to expressing the importance of happiness, compassion, warm-heartedness, self-discipline, friendship and human solidarity amongst our diversity," said Professor Nigel Hatton, with the Department of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, and moderator of the presentation.

The Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is a man of peace, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and one of the most recognizable faces of Buddhism. For decades, he has worked toward a free Tibet.

The award is made possible by a generous gift from Spendlove, a Merced native. It was founded in 2005 in honor of her parents, Alice and Clifford Spendlove, who were lifelong professionals dedicated to the lives of citizens, youth and students of the Merced region.

Every year, the Spendlove Prize honours an individual who can serve as a role model and inspirational figure for students, faculty and the community surrounding UC Merced. The prize has an annual value of $15,000.

The Dalai Lama who was born on July 6, 1935, to a farming family in a small village in north-eastern Tibet, is the 15 th recipient of this award.

His sustained commitment to these and other important human values led the Spendlove Prize Selection Committee to name His Holiness the 15th recipient of the prize, uniting him with his friend, former President Jimmy Carter, as distinguished Spendlove laureates.

The Spendlove Prize Selection Committee is chaired by School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts Dean Jeffrey Gilger, Sherrie Spendlove as a representative from the Spendlove family, Hatton as a faculty member, and Lee Anderson and Charlie Bennett as community representatives.

Some  other past recipients of the Spendlove Prize include Merced native and Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree, Jr., who was the first person to receive the award at UC Merced's grand opening on Sept. 5, 2005; UC Santa Cruz Professor Faye Crosby; 2016 Pulitzer Prize winning poet Peter Balakian, a leading voice of Armenian Genocide recognition; attorney and Professor Anita F. Hill; 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum; human rights activist and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Nadia Murad; and civil rights activist and Black Lives Matter Global Network co-founder Alicia Garza.