Date September 23, 2016
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Brown provost joins global leaders awarded for work on fairness and human rights

Society for Progress recognizes Richard M. Locke with an inaugural Progress Medal for his scholarship on working conditions and labor rights in the global economy.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The Society for Progress has named Richard M. Locke, Brown University provost and professor of political science and international and public affairs, recipient of one of five inaugural Progress Medals awarded to leaders across the globe for scholarship on issues of fairness and well-being.

The award recognizes Locke’s “work on labor justice in global supply chains and the influence and limits of private standards in integrating equity and efficiency,” the Society stated in announcing the awards on Sept. 23.

“I am both honored and humbled to be a recipient of this award,” said Locke, a scholar and authority on international labor relations and worker rights, and comparative political economy.

“Throughout my career, I have been challenged and inspired by issues of fairness, justice and human rights, and I have had the great privilege of engaging in research focused on understanding and improving working conditions and labor rights. It is particularly gratifying that, through this new award, the Society for Progress is emphasizing the role and value of university-based research in addressing some of society’s most pressing issues.”

Locke joined a group including Indra Nooyi, chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, fellow scholars Jean-Paul Fitoussi (Paris Institute of Political Studies), James G. March (Stanford), and Nobel Prize winners Amartya Sen (Harvard) and Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia) as the inaugural Progress Medal recipients.

In addition to gold Progress Medals, the Society for Progress — an independent group of social scientists, philosophers and business leaders — awarded each recipient $100,000. Locke said that he has used the funds to contribute to endowed scholarships he established at Brown and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his doctoral degree and served on the faculty for 25 years before joining Brown in 2013 as director of the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.