Each year the Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence gathers the community to honor an international exemplar of ethical leadership with the Inamori Ethics Prize. Case Western Reserve will present the 2017 Inamori Ethics Prize to Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Washington, D.C.-based Children’s Defense Fund, during Inamori Center events on the Case Western Reserve campus, Sept. 14-15, 2017.
Edelman has been an advocate for children’s rights and the disadvantaged for decades. Under her leadership, the nonprofit Children’s Defense Fund, which Edelman established in 1973, has become the nation’s leading advocacy organization for children and families, championing policies and programs to lift children from poverty, protect them from abuse and neglect and ensure their access to health care and quality education.
Edelman, a graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, began her career in the mid-1960s when, as the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi.
Edelman has received more than 100 honorary degrees and many awards, including the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, the Heinz Award and a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship. In 2000, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings.
Read more about Marian Wright Edelman.
The Schubert Center for Child Studies is a proud community partner for this event.