Soka University of America (SUA) has named Carlos Alberto Torres the recipient of the 2026 Soka Global Citizen Award in recognition of his lifelong contributions to the intellectual foundations of global citizenship education. As a leading authority on comparative and international education, Torres has spent more than four decades researching, teaching, and writing about how education can prepare people to live responsibly as global citizens.
“We are honored to announce Carlos Alberto Torres as the recipient of the 2026 Soka Global Citizen Award,” SUA President Edward M. Feasel said. “Torres has devoted his life’s work to articulating what global citizenship education truly means and how it can be taught, and in doing so he has helped shape the very field our university was founded to advance. His scholarship reflects the wisdom, courage, and compassion that our founder Daisaku Ikeda identified as the essential elements of global citizenship.”
The award ceremony will take place on Wednesday, Sept. 9 at 5 p.m. in the Founder’s Meeting Room.
Torres is a Distinguished Professor at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and the founding director of the Paulo Freire Institute, which he established in partnership with Brazilian philosopher and critical social theorist Paulo Freire. A major interpreter of Freire’s life and thought, he has spent decades building on Freire’s ideas about critical consciousness and liberatory education, extending them into a broader framework for global citizenship.
From 2016 to 2020, Torres served as the inaugural holder of the UNESCO-UCLA Chair on Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education, and he is the series editor of Routledge’s Critical Global Citizenship Education collection. His book “Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Critical Global Citizenship Education” and his co-authored volume “Global Citizenship Education and the Crisis of Multiculturalism” are among his major works in the field. Throughout his career, he has authored and edited a wide body of scholarship, including books, articles, and book chapters that have been translated into multiple languages.
Torres has also helped shape the field through his leadership, serving as president of both the Comparative and International Education Society and the World Council of Comparative Education Societies. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a corresponding member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, and an honorary fellow of the Comparative and International Education Society.
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Torres pursued a uniquely international academic path, studying in Argentina, Mexico, the United States, and Canada before holding visiting professorships at universities on five continents.
The Soka Global Citizen Award, established in 2021 by Soka University of America to honor individuals who exemplify the ideals of global citizenship, carries a $25,000 stipend to support the recipient’s ongoing work. Torres joins a distinguished list of past honorees, including Ambassador Andrew Young, Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, Wanjira Mathai, Mirian Vilela, and Herbie Hancock, all recognized for their enduring contributions to humanity.
