Jennifer Morton Receives 2023 Grawemeyer Award in Education

Jennifer Morton, Presidential Penn Compact Associate Professor of Philosophy, is the 2023 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award in Education. This prestigious honor recognizes Morton’s work on the ethical sacrifices made by first-generation and low-income university students.

The Grawemeyer Award in Education is intended to stimulate the dissemination, public scrutiny and implementation of ideas that have potential to bring about significant improvement in educational practice and advances in educational attainment. Designed to recognize a specific recent idea or study, the award was created not only to reward the individuals responsible, but also to draw attention to their ideas, proposals or achievements.

Morton was honored for her book Moving up without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility, which focuses on the hidden costs faced by first-generation and low-income students. She found the dream of achieving success by attending college is deeply flawed for some, often forcing students to turn away from family and friends to achieve academic success. The book also won the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ Frederic W. Ness Book Award.

“By focusing on the dilemmas first-generation and low-income students can face when pursuing a degree, Morton shed light on an important but often neglected issue,” said Jeff Valentine, Grawemeyer education award director. “She also offers strategies that colleges, faculty and students themselves can use to navigate these challenges.”

Morton is a scholar of the philosophy of education, with a particular emphasis on educational injustice. She is highly engaged in public philosophy and has been interviewed for The Atlantic, Inside Higher Education, PBS, and IAI news; and has written pieces for Aeon, The Philosophers’ Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and New York Daily News.