Charles Butterworth Receives Barry Prize from American Academy of Sciences and Letters

Charles Butterworth, a professor emeritus of the Department of Government and Politics, was recently presented with the American Academy of Sciences and Letters’ (AASL) 2025 Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement, an annual prize presented to scholars who have “made outstanding contributions to humanity's understanding and cultivation of the good, the true, and the beautiful.”

Butterworth is one of ten 2025 Barry Prize recipients, as is UMD Distinguished University Professor Sylvester James Gates, Jr., a professor in the Department of Physics and the School of Public Policy. UMD was the only school with two faculty members to receive the award this year, and only two other faculty members from public universities have received the award since its 2023 inception.

"Two University of Maryland faculty members receiving the Barry Prize this year is a testament to the fact that some of the world’s best and brightest minds call College Park their academic home," said BSOS Dean Susan Rivera. "Our university and college communities are very fortunate to have had the chance to learn from these esteemed experts."

As Barry Prize recipients, Butterworth and Gates will each receive a cash award and become a member of the AASL.

“What a most pleasant surprise it was to receive the Barry Prize for 2025 along with membership in the American Academy of Sciences and Letters,” said Butterworth. “It serves as a delightful recognition that several years of painstaking work to highlight the breadth and depth of Arabic-Islamic culture and philosophy have not been in vain.”

Butterworth was selected for the Barry Prize for his contributions to the understanding of Arabic and Islamic philosophy, as well as the relationship between reason and religious texts. In his award citation, the Academy says that Butterworth “has broadened the world of scholarship for generations of students in politics, philosophy, and religion,” and “provided scholars around the world with intellectual resources for inquiry into the good life.”

Butterworth received his B.A. from Michigan State University, and both his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago, where he focused his studies on political philosophy, Arabic, and Islamic civilization. He deepened his expertise in these areas by studying at the University of Ayn Shams in Egypt. Prior to graduate studies at the University of Chicago, a Fulbright grant to the University of Bordeaux and University of Nancy in France allowed him to complete a doctorate in philosophy on Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He has deepened his understanding of Arabic and Islamic culture by lecturing, teaching, and living within many of the Arabic-speaking countries of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as by lecturing in East and West Africa plus Western and Central Europe.

After joining the UMD faculty as an assistant professor in 1969, Butterworth climbed the ranks from assistant professor to Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, and received BSOS’ Excellence in Teaching and Mentorship award in 2001. During his tenure at UMD, he acted as an editor of numerous academic journals; translated multiple articles and books; was the principal investigator of a Smithsonian-sponsored project in Cairo, Egypt concerning Medieval Islamic Logic; was a member of multiple societies, including serving as a president of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies; worked on a project regarding the relationship between revelation and political philosophy as a 1992-1993 fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.; and was named a fellow of the Academy of Excellence in Teaching and Learning in 2004.

Since retiring in 2007, Butterworth has served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Political Science at the American University of Cairo, and as president of the American Academy of Liberal Education, a position which he held until 2015. In 2024, in the Arabic to English Language Achievement Category, Butterworth was also awarded a Sheikh Hamad Prize for Translation and International Understanding for his translation efforts.

“Many thanks to the University of Maryland community for providing such a congenial academic home for so many years,” said Butterworth. "As one able to attend college thanks to a Western Golf Association Evans Scholar Foundation (WGA-ESF) caddy scholarship, it is deeply gratifying that UMD has now opened a chapter house for Evans Scholar Foundation recipients, thereby making its excellent education offerings available to many otherwise unable to have such an opportunity." 

Photo provided by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters

Published on Tue, Dec 2, 2025 - 12:21PM