“You don’t change the world by doing what you’re told.” So says Joi Ito, the director of the MIT Media Lab, on the nomination form for a new type of award: a prize for disobedience.
The award–a $250,000, no-strings-attached cash prize, funded by LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman–will go to a person or group responsible for an “extraordinary” example of disobedience for the good of society. While that might take the form of traditional civil disobedience, Ito defines disobedience broadly.
“It’s the attorney general unwilling to yield to political pressure to go against what she believes is right,” he tells Fast Company. “It’s the Department of Energy not willing to give up the names of climate negotiators. It’s the EPA setting up a mirror site. Those people wouldn’t be traditionally what you would think of as disobedient people, but those are disobedient acts.”
The winner might be a scientist questioning theories that might jeopardize future funding; they might be an artist; they might be a human rights activist.
The only limitation is that the work should be what the organizers call “responsible” disobedience–both physically nonviolent and made by people who take responsibility for their actions, a definition reached after many conversations with experts in civil disobedience. Edward Snowden, for example, who has received nominations, would probably rank lower than someone like Chelsea Manning who has taken responsibility by standing trial in the United States. The recipient must also be living, and have taken a personal risk to create change.
If there’s some irony in the fact that an award for disobedience has rules–and that fact might deter some potential entrants–the creators wanted to honor a particular type of hero.
“We wanted to see if we could identify very creative and principled disobedience,” says Ito. “I talked to a lot of students, and some of them had started saying, this nonviolence stuff doesn’t work anymore, or those days of Gandhi are over. And some people threatened to engage in disobedience that I felt was sort of reckless.”
The aim of the award is to help someone make further progress. “My hope is that we support a person in the middle of their career and help provide coaching, support, and visibility to help him or her be more effective,” says Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab. “We hope we’re not just rewarding what they’ve already achieved.”