Jonathan D. Jansen, vice chancellor and rector of the University of the Free State and South Africa's first black dean, has been named the 2013 recipient of the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance.
The University of California, Merced, will award the prize to Jansen during an evening ceremony Oct. 28 on campus.
The Spendlove Prize was established through a generous gift to the university from Sherrie Spendlove in honor of her parents, lifelong Merced residents Alice and Clifford Spendlove. The prize every year honors an individual who exemplifies the delivery of social justice, diplomacy and tolerance in his or her work.
"It is fitting that our first international recipient of the Spendlove Prize should come from South Africa, a country that has lessons to teach in moving through devastating divisions and social injustice to seek unity and peaceful coexistence," Sherrie Spendlove said. "Professor Jonathan Jansen, one of South Africa's leading academics and intellectuals, stresses the transformative power of education both as a way out of poverty and as a means to mutual understanding and empathy. He has inspired the world with his courageous stance of leading his university with the peacemaking methods of forgiveness and reintegration into the community."
