Announcement from the MIT Media Lab:

We are now accepting nominations for the first-ever MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award, which carries a $250,000 cash prize, no strings attached.

This award will go to a person or group engaged in what we believe is an extraordinary example of disobedience for the benefit of society.

What does this mean? Societies and institutions lean toward order and away from chaos. While necessary for functioning, structure can also stifle creativity, flexibility, and productive change–and ultimately, society’s health and sustainability. This is true from academia, to corporations, governments, the sciences, and our local communities.

With this award, we honor work that impacts society in positive ways, and is consistent with a set of key principles. These principles include non-violence, creativity, courage, and taking responsibility for one’s actions. This disobedience is not limited to specific disciplines; examples include scientific research, civil rights, freedom of speech, human rights, and the freedom to innovate.

The MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award seeks to highlight effective, responsible, ethical disobedience across disciplines, and around the world. Disobedience Award objectives are to build awareness and support of disobedience-robust work being done, and to promote role models for younger people.

Eligibility requirements for the $250,000 prize
The recipient must be living.
The recipient must have taken a personal risk in order to affect positive change for greater society.
Both individuals and groups are eligible to win the prize.Selection Process
A screening committee composed of a small and diverse group of individuals in the MIT Media Lab network of activists, scientists, designers, and engineers will review the nominations and select the award recipient.There are two ways you can participate in this process: by nominating a person or group, or through enlisting your social circle in the process. We’ll reward you for both actions, since they are both crucial:
1. If you are the first person to make the nomination of the Disobedience Award winner, we will fly you to Boston to attend the award ceremony on July 21 at the MIT Media Lab.
2. If you recruit others to make nominations, and one of them is the first person to nominate the Disobedience Award winner, we will also fly you to attend the award ceremony in July.

We will be accepting nominations from March 6 to May 1 (eight weeks), and plan to announce the recipient at our summer event on July 21, 2017. We will announce a shortlist of nominees prior to the event.

We take privacy seriously.

This nomination form is a secure form and the information submitted will not be shared publicly. Information submitted will be reviewed by the award selection committee only. If one of your nominees is selected as the award recipient, we will contact the winner for permission before announcing any personal information. We are mindful of privacy and the fact that many people and organizations doing disobedient work might not want to disclose their information to the public.