Ambassador Andrew Young to Receive 2022 Soka Global Citizen Award

Soka University of America has named former US Ambassador Andrew Young recipient of the 2022 Soka Global Citizen Award in recognition of his numerous achievements as a transformational leader in the nation and world, and his lifelong dedication to peacebuilding, human rights, and the freedom of all people.

Noting the critical role Ambassador Young played in shaping history as one of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s lieutenants in the American civil rights struggle, Soka University of America Vice President Kevin Moncrief said honoring him with the Soka Global Citizen Award “is a unique and rare opportunity for Soka University of America. Ambassador Young is highly aligned with our mission to ‘Foster Global Citizens’ around the world and on our beautiful campus.”

In January 2021, Ambassador Young and Distinguished Visiting Professor Hortense Spillers conducted a dialogue to commemorate the life and contributions of Dr. King, the first event co-sponsored by SUA’s newly established Center for Race, Ethnicity, and Human Rights and its Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Beginning his career as a pastor, Ambassador Young became an early leader in the civil rights movement. He served as executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and later became active in politics, serving as the first Black congressman from Georgia since reconstruction; a US ambassador to the United Nations in the Carter administration; the first Black mayor of Atlanta; and the leader of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, bringing in tens of billions of dollars of private investment to Georgia before and since.

Ambassador Young, who turned 90 on March 12, has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, France’s Légion d’honneur, the NAACP Spingarn Medal, and more than 45 honorary degrees from universities such as Dartmouth, Yale, Notre Dame, Clark Atlanta, and Emory.

He continues to lead a vital and contributive life today, currently heading up several large-scale projects, including the Aquaponics Project to provide food security worldwide. Ambassador Young is also leading the Lemna project, which aims to extract rich plant-based organic protein and ethanol from globally available tiny aquatic plants to provide alternative wholesome organic protein and help alleviate malnutrition. He recently established the International University of Grand-Bassam in Cote d’Ivoire, Africa, a scholarship program for students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and is working on various television documentaries and health and healing projects, including fighting HIV-1 and Ebola virus disease. Finally, he is playing an integral role in Mobile Harbor, a project to improve the international commerce capacity of U.S. ports.

The Soka Global Citizen Award, inaugurated by SUA President Edward M. Feasel in 2021, includes a $25,000 stipend to help continue Ambassador Young’s honored work.

Ambassador Young, who spent several decades handling domestic and international conflicts, is renowned for his ability to use diplomacy and negotiation to bridge the chasm between opposing sides. Speaking to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2018 about non-violent approaches to conflict resolution, Ambassador Young said, “There’s no problem on the planet that can’t be solved without violence. That’s the lesson of the civil rights movement. There were serious problems here. We could have had a bloodbath. We made democracy—which is a substitute for violence—work. And we could not have made democracy work with violence.”

Young is the second recipient of the Soka Global Citizen Award. The inaugural winner was Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, the former Bangladesh ambassador to the United Nations who was honored for his life’s work and achievements for peace, women’s rights and equality, and for the cause of the world’s poorest and most disadvantaged nations.