by UTTARA CHOUDHURY
Spivak, a professor in the humanities at Columbia University, plans to use her Kyoto Prize money to do something immediate and practical about her old obsessions.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 70, a celebrity in academia whose work focuses on those marginalised by Western culture, including immigrants, the working class and women, won the annual Kyoto Prize, along with an American regarded as the father of computer graphics, and a Japanese molecular cell biologist.
The Inamori Foundation announced that US computer scientist Ivan Sutherland, Japan’s Yoshinori Ohsumi and Spivak will each receive a diploma, a gold Kyoto Prize medal and a cash gift of 50 million yen ($6,30,000) at a ceremony in Kyoto in November.
Spivak, a professor in the humanities at Columbia University, plans to use her Kyoto Prize money to do something immediate and practical about her old obsessions.
“It will go to my rural education foundation. I will probably keep $50,000 bucks for myself and let the rest enrich the foundation. My teachers need higher salaries,” Spivak told Firstpost.
Spivak founded the Pares Chandra Chakravorty Memorial Literacy Project, in 1997, to provide primary education for children in rural India. It runs schools in West Bengal and Spivak has been spotted over the years dressed in a sari and combat boots trudging out to villages to train teachers.
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