Bard College Professor Roosevelt Montás Awarded $100,000 Prize for Work in the Humanities

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture has named Roosevelt Montás as the recipient of the organization’s prestigious Hiett Prize. The $100,000 cash prize was established and endowed in 2005 by philanthropist Kim Hiett Jordan to support emerging leaders in the humanities who are actively contributing to ideas around what it means to be human.
 
Past recipients of the Hiett Prize have come from disciplines such as philosophy, poetry, history, theology, literary criticism, and more. Montás is a specialist in American literature and culture, with a particular interest in American national identity. Montás joined Bard’s faculty in 2025, when he was appointed as the Laura Y. Chang and Arnold Chavkin Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life at Bard, a newly created faculty chair within Bard’s Chang Chavkin Center for Liberal Education and Civic Life. He also teaches in Bard’s literature program.
 
Through his research and teaching, Montás has focused on the importance of liberal education and the future of the humanities. At his alma mater Columbia University, he was the founding director of the Freedom and Citizenship program, an academic enrichment seminar course that teaches the foundations of Western political thought to high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are also provided with college application guidance.
 
“I am deeply honored to receive the Hiett Prize in the Humanities,” said Montás. “I have devoted my career to the conviction that the humanities are not a luxury but the most powerful means we have for cultivating free minds, enlarging our moral imagination, and preparing us for lives of purpose and responsible citizenship.  At a time when the question of what it means to be human is becoming ever more urgent, the Hiett Prize is a bold affirmation that the humanities remain indispensable to our common life.”
 
“I receive this honor not as a culmination but as a promissory note—a vote of confidence in work that is still unfolding,” Montás continued. “That confidence, and this extraordinary recognition, inspires my profound gratitude and renewed commitment to the work.”
 
The 2026 Hiett Prize is the first to be awarded since the Dallas Institute joined Dedman College at Southern Methodist University (SMU). Programming honoring Montás will take place at SMU on October 15–16.

This event was last updated on 09-10-2026

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