How to politely decline the university medal?

Question

I have studied in an Australian university and throughout my university studies, I declined all prizes awarded to me. It is not that I have had something against my university but it is due to my own ethical values. I believe that a true scholar should have no interest in fame and prizes and that is exactly the reason I declined all the prizes given to me so far (I want to remain a true scholar).

It's not that I see myself superior to others in any way; indeed, I always claimed to be the dumbest student in my university. If it takes someone 10 minutes to understand a math theorem, it would take me at least 3 hours to understand it properly. Some people unfortunately misinterpret my statement:

I believe that a true scholar should have no interest in fame and prizes and that is exactly the reason I declined all the prizes given to me so far (I want to remain a true scholar).

I did not mean in any way, that someone who accepts prizes is not a true scholar and if that is the message conveyed by my statement, then I apologize from the bottom of my heart. This statement only applies to me; if I accept prizes, then I think that I am better than others and because of this I decline prizes because I want to remain a true scholar. I do not want to feel superior to others. This will make me not work hard. Some people said that I am following Perelman's footsteps. I honestly do not even consider myself a successful student; how could I dare to compare myself to Perelman. I am only an ordinary dumb student.

I just received an email from the university that this July (my graduation ceremony), they will award the university medal to me. I am going to decline the university medal but I am not sure what is the best way to do this politely so that the academics at my university will not be offended.

Update: After discussing this with the dean of my faculty, I agreed to accept the university medal. It will be annotated in my academic transcript, record, and testamur. This helps my Phd admission chances in the top 10 universities (something I was told by academics at my university).

Answer 1

The discussion here about your question provides an interesting microcosm of the sort of responses you are likely to get to your decision to decline the medal from people at your university who learn about it. Already here we are seeing a lot of people who don't even know you telling you to reconsider your decision, implying that you have a moral duty to accept the medal as a service to the university and to the other students who ostensibly are meant to be inspired by your excellent academic performance (which seems like a very weak argument to me personally), and offering other kinds of unsolicited advice that doesn't answer the specific question you asked. I sense in these responses a fair amount of indignation and possibly offense, and I think it's interesting to try to understand what is causing it.

My feeling is that what's going on is that for most people it's hard and even offensive to see someone turning down a great honor or privilege that they themselves would be happy to have and maybe can only dream of achieving. It feels to people like a waste, like seeing something very valuable being casually thrown away, or like seeing a rich person lighting a cigar with a $100 bill. As much as people may be able to understand your reasoning at an intellectual level, at the emotional level it feels that not accepting the medal is an act of condescension on your part, as if you are saying that you are so much better than everyone else that you don't even need earthly benefits like awards or medals to feel superior.

With this analysis in mind, let me answer your question. If you have indeed decided not to accept the medal, there is nothing you can do other than to explain your decision and the reasoning for it to the people at your university as clearly as you can, just as you explained it here. You should fully expect that some of them will be offended, and some of them will try to convince you to change your mind and offer the same kind of advice and moralistic arguments that are being offered to you here. I don't think that can be avoided, but I don't necessarily think that it needs to be avoided either. I have great respect for people who follow their beliefs at the risk of being unpopular or angering others and would like to encourage you to ultimately do what you think is right, after carefully weighing all the relevant information. Good luck!

Answer 2

The problem is as @WetlabWalter says: the medal is not just for you - it is for everybody that supported you and, in fact, indirectly for your class, and lecturers.

You have a good reason (for yourself) to decline it, which is commendable.

But you might offend those who recommended you, those who taught you (who would be indirectly honoured) and possibly your classmates.

If on weighing your principles against this you still stand by your decision to decline the prize, send a letter as long beforehand as you can, explaining your position and emphasise your history of declining prizes (to indicate that they are not the only one on the receiving end of the rejection).

Don't decline on the event itself, this will be a major embarrassment.

Finally, if you develop a reputation for declining prizes, grant managers may decide that they'd rather not put glamourous, funded programs your way, so be prepared for limitations of funding in the future. For anybody as brilliant as a Grothendieck or Perelman, that should not be a problem, but if that's not the case, take that into account.

PostScriptum: The balance of prize distribution is very fine. A prize is supposed to honour the recipient. But if the recipient is absolutely outstanding, the recipient would add as much glamour to the prize as the other way around. Therefore, a rejection penalises also the prize-giver.

Why are prizes at all relevant? You have a point in that a true scholar should not be motivated by prizes and honours. However, in today's very crowded fields, a prize is like a flag that demonstrates "this is how things should be done". It sets a signal of example for others. By rejecting the prize you send the message that you do not care to be an example; which is entirely your right - but you must be aware of that.

Interestingly, Sartre was one of the few people declining the Nobel prize (literature). It was claimed that, some years later, he decided that he'd rather be in need of the prize money and asked whether he could get it retrospectively (after this story, he couldn't). Whether this anecdote is true or false, it makes clear you have to think hard whether there could be a constellation whether you could regret your decision - it doesn't have to be for the money, of course.

Answer 3

Get over yourself.

This isn't about you. And this isn't really even about your work. This is about a community celebrating its own values, by recognizing the individuals that best represent those values.

"True scholars" don't exist in a vacuum. We are part of a community of scholars. We use resources created by that community, most obviously in the form of the work of our predecessors ("shoulders of giants"), but more indirectly through the efforts of colleagues, teachers, students, advisors, committee members, letter-writers, department chairs, librarians, referees, editors, conference organizers, and funding agencies that make our work possible. We owe that community an incredible debt. Accepting recognition gives you an opportunity, which most people never have, to display the gratitude that you owe that community.

It's noble and selfless not to pursue recognition, but by actively declining recognition, you are making a clear and public statement that the offered recognition—and by extension, the community that offers it—is either inappropriate or beneath your notice.

If you actually believe that the university has selected you inappropriately, either through incompetence or malice, or that the ethical and intellectual standards of the university are so compromised that you don't want to support them, then of course you should refuse the prize. Otherwise, refusal is simply selfish; the appropriate response is to accept the recognition with humility and gratitude, and then get back to work.

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Let me add a response to a specific comment by @CaptainEmacs:

As a scientist, all you agree to is to join a scholarly activity, and publish, and, if your head of department squeezes you, gain grants. Some introverted people or people from "introversion"-primed societies really do not want the extra attention from a prize.

I respectfully disagree with the first sentence. Becoming a scientist entails more than just doing research and publishing the results of that research. We also have an ethical obligation to evaluate our colleagues' work (because they evaluate ours), to write recommendation letters for our students and junior colleagues (because our advisors and senior colleagues have written them for us), and to make our work visible (because we work for the benefit of the community, not just for ourselves). And yes, I believe we have an ethical obligation to help promote our communities/organizations/subfields, because we have materially benefited from others' promotion of our communities/organizations/subfields.

Yes, I understand agree that some people really do not want the extra attention from prizes. For similar reasons, some people really do not want to submit their results for peer review, or really do not want to present their work to a live audience, or really do not want to write grant proposals to obtain the necessary resources for their work. But sometimes we all have to do things we really don't want to do.

Answer 4

My answer to your question is that I think that you should seriously rethink your opinion about "True Scholars" (I will expound on the reasons below) but if you are unable or unwilling to do so then rather than refuse to accept awards in your own name, accept them on behalf of all students at the university and use whatever prize money may be attached to create a scholarship program for the benefit of future "true scholars". Who knows, you might be able to set up the scholarship for "true scholars" only and require recipients to pledge to refuse all awards in order to be awarded the scholarship.

As for the idea that a "True Scholar" accepts no awards/rewards, respectfully that is poppycock! It is correct that a true scholar seeks no award but that is not the same thing.

When a colleague says "Thank you" or "Good job" do you decline that? If not then you are a hypocrite because those too are awards of an informal nature. Tell those pesky colleagues to knock it off.

What about merit scholarships? Those are also a form of award based on accomplishments, should those be refused by students needing funds to complete their studies? or should they only be for merit in fields unrelated to the student's studies?

A true scholar seeks no awards and does what he or she does for the love of the work, but accepting kudos is part of the human experience and unless you plan to be a hermit you need to be part of the human experience.

Furthermore, awards signify reputation and reputation is part of the work because it allows your work to be considered more seriously by others. It is part of the work because without peer review and collaboration the work cannot progress. A paper is published on the merit of the work, but it is considered (moved to the top of the review stack) on the reputation of the author(s). Without reputation a paper can be delayed and possibly ignored for a great deal of time. Getting published is part of the work of a modern scholar because that is how the work is shared and expanded on.

In a bygone era when scholars were few, a scholar's reputation could be established by word of mouth or letters of introduction. But in a world with millions of scholars spread globally in multiple languages, the reputation of a scholar is crucial to being able to separate the wheat from the chaff. People's time is valuable so why would they bother reading a research paper or proposal from an "unknown" with no reputation. A person who does not have a reputation may very well have a wonderful insight into an important matter but if his or her insight is never considered by others so what?!

Finally, I propose to you that saying no true scholar accepts awards is part of the NTS fallacy. Saying this means that any scholar who dares to accept an award for the work they have done is not a "real" scholar, thus by that logic Albert Einstein was a fake. Poppycock I say again!

Answer 5

I don't know precisely which university you are at, but at least at the University of Sydney the University Medal is not merely a medal or an award. Its also a grade and is printed on your degree as such. So for instance, possible grades for an Honours degree are "2nd class honours", then "1st class honours", then "1st class honours with university medal" (source: the latter is what is printed on my degree). So to reject the university medal is about as absurd as trying to reject "first class honours" on your Honours degree.

EDIT: I am elaborating in response to a comment below. From Wikipedia

In some universities, the University Medal is treated as a distinct division or class of the Honours degree ("First class Honours and University Medal").

This includes the biggest university in Australia. So, at a minimum, make sure you are not at such a university, or else your question does not make much sense. For Americans, it is like asking how to turn down a grade of Magna Cum Laude on a Bachelor's degree. And even if the OP is not at such a university he should hesitate to turn down something which is, at least on a de-facto level, simply considered as a division of an Honours degree. Employers will simply assume he was in a lower division.

EDIT 2: I am updating this again to provide more context on the university medal. The university of Sydney explicitly lists this as a grade: honours grades at University of Sydney. Depending on the institute, in Australia the university medal often goes to several students. For example, here are the university medal guidelines from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). The Science faculty at UTS hands out from 3 to 6 of these in a year. Moreover, they are usually given to the students with the highest average grades, and the latter is typically the main (or sole) criteria for them. An average of 85% (High Distinction level) across the subject is a typical prerequisite.

Grade inflation is a pretty serious problem in Australia, and my feeling is that more university medals are handed out now than in the past. At least in academia, some employers or potential PhD advisors really do look for, or even expect, potential students to have a university medal. Either explicitly or by default, in the Australian university system the university medal plays mostly the same role that the top Latin Honours plays in other countries. Especially if the OP wants a career in academia, I encourage him to think again before insisting on receiving a lower grade on his Honours Degree.

Answer 6

hmm, I went to a high school which had no academic prizes because the head thought they were wrong. I received a prize for being top of my year as an undergrad at a well-known English university.

I am now a professor at an Australian university and regularly participate in deciding the award of the honours medal for my subject.

If you wrote me a letter thanking me for awarding the honours medal and saying that you did not want to accept a prize or medal since prizes conflict with your values, I would think you were a bit odd but I would not be offended.

For what it's worth, I think that honours medals tend to be awarded very objectively, but prizes, in general, in academe are very political and taken far too seriously. Academic careers are unfortunately about building prestige in various ways to land a prestigious job. If you get a non-prestigious job you will probably have a heavy teaching load and little research money and so not much time for scholarship.

Answer 7

I think the short answer is GautierC's comment: Send them a letter politely explaining why you reject the prize. Make clear that you are not rejecting it because you have some problem with the people awarding it, i.e. it's not "I don't want to be associated with people like you who do X", but a general principle you follow. Do it far enough in advance so that they can give the prize to someone else.

But on a larger scale, I question the premise of your question. "I believe that a true scholar should have no interest in fame and prizes." Personally, I haven't sought any sort of awards or prizes since I was in high school. But when on occassion someone offers me some award or honor, I think it's simply polite to accept it and sound grateful. Telling people, "I don't care about your awards" sounds arrogant and rude. You're telling them that their opinions don't matter. Imagine if you paid a compliment to someone -- whether it's "that was an excellent paper you published in that prestigious journal" or "that dress is very pretty" or whatever -- and the person replied, "I don't care about your opinion." You would surely feel insulted.

You don't have to be scrambling after fame and posing for the cameras to accept an award that is offered you. Just say "thank you", accept the award, and put the plaque or certificate or whatever in the closet and don't worry about it. Then the people who gave the award are happy, and you are not hurt in any way.

I think this position of yours could ultimately lead to others not wanting to work with you. They will feel slighted and insulted at your rejection of their offers.

When you apply for a job, being able to list awards and honors on your resume will surely help. Similarly when applying for a research grant. I guess you could say, "I rejected numerous awards because accepting awards violates my eithical standards", but if I was evaluating the application, I'd suspect that was an excuse for not earning any.

Answer 8

To show that the other opinions are not shared unilaterally, not even in the US, here a statement by Feynman, the Nobel Prize winner, himself:

"I don't like honors. I'm appreciated for the work that I did, and for people who appreciate it, and I notice that other physicists use my work. I don't need anything else. I don't think there's any sense to anything else. I don't see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish Academy decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize. I've already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it. Those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me. I don't believe in honors. It bothers me, honors. Honors is epilets, honors is uniforms. My poppa brought me up this way. I can't stand it, it hurts me. When I was in High School, one of the first honors I got was to be a member of the Arista, which is a group of kids who got good grades. Everybody wanted to be a member of the Arista. I discovered that what they did in their meetings was to sit around to discuss who else was worthy to join this wonderful group that we are. OK So we sat around trying to decide who would get to be allowed into this Arista. This kind of thing bothers me psychologically for one or another reason. I don't understand myself. Honors, and from that day to this, always bothered me. I had trouble when I became a member of the National Academy of Science, and I had ultimately to resign. Because there was another organization, most of whose time was spent in choosing who was illustrious enough to be allowed to join us in our organization. Including such questions as: 'we physicists have to stick together because there's a very good chemist that they're trying to get in and we haven't got enough room...'. What's the matter with chemists? The whole thing was rotten . Because the purpose was mostly to decide who could have this honor. OK? I don't like honors."

He actually played with the idea of not receiving the prize ("Surely you are joking, Mr.Feynman"), but he grudgingly acceded that there was no way to get out without having more hassle. So you are not alone in your way of thinking, Perelman who declined the Fields Medal is another example.

So what is the problem ? If you are declining something, you are sending always the message "It has for me not such a value that it something to strive for". If someone offers you then a prize or honor, people are forced to reason for themselves if a prize or honor is really something to be proud of, you are subconsciously attacking their judgement.

Back to the counterarguments:

" the medal is not just for you - it is for everybody that supported you and, in fact, indirectly for your class, and lecturers."
"This is about a community celebrating its own values, by recognizing the individuals that best represent those values.[...] Accepting recognition gives you an opportunity, which most people never have[bold by me], to display the gratitude that you owe that community."

I think the reason is simple: The western world, especially the US, has two conflicting values: Everyone should be treated equal and people should strive for the best and leaving the competition behind. This is per definition impossible.
One acceptable solution may be: People are striving and fighting, but the collective must approve the final result. This "most people never have" is particularly telling: Why should people base their decision on what many other people which they have nothing to do with get? By declining you are essentially denying them their power to influence you which gives them the illusion to have some control over the situation. That may be the reason people are arguing "that he thinks better of himself" and acting hurt and angry.

I find it particularly strange that here in Academia people are unaware of invisible filter bubbles. We have a huge number of different and known cultures (Deaf, LBGT, religious rights) who have a decidedly other viewpoint than the consensus. Why have people here so much trouble to understand that denying honors may have reasons which do not imply negative judgement of other people and that there people and cultures out there which even value such decisions?

However, in today's very crowded fields, a prize is like a flag that demonstrates "this is how things should be done". It sets a signal of example for others.

Counterargument: Why not simply celebrating the content of the research itself? Time will tell always if a discovery has any worth. And how embarassing for the prize giver if the prize and acknowledgment reward bad or offensive research. It may send "We were so blinded that we did not see the true nature of the research" and it gives an incentive for the prize giver to sweep bad decisions under a rug.

People's time is valuable so why would they bother reading a research paper or proposal from an "unknown" with no reputation.

Because it is good science.
Sure, we have now the situation that there are so many people in the academic environment that you need to filter and choose, so your position has strong merit. On the other hand: If everyone never read anything apart from a specific group assigned with merit and good research is never capable to enter the academic mainstream: Is such an academic system not broken by definition?

We also have an ethical obligation to evaluate our colleagues' work (because they evaluate ours), to write recommendation letters for our students and junior colleagues (because our advisors and senior colleagues have written them for us), and to make our work visible (because we work for the benefit of the community, not just for ourselves). And yes, I believe we have an ethical obligation to help promote our communities/organizations /subfields, because we have materially benefited from others' promotion of our communities/organizations/subfields.

If you view the history, some countries give or gave away university education essentially for free (which is still practised in some countries), provide research opportunities without grants and with less competition there was no pressure to write recommendation letters. So many arguments you mention are much more culture-specific than you may have thought.

I accept that not receiving honors will make live a lot more difficult and the decision to do this should be carefully considered, but I do not accept that declining honors is a bad thing.

Answer 9

As you can see from the other answers, a lot of people will get offended by your refusal to accept the award. Most academics greatly value the endless list of awards and honors that they give to each other, and no matter how you say it, they will interpret a refusal to accept an award as saying you're better than them in some way. Trying to explain that it's nothing personal and is part of a belief system of yours will likely be like talking to a wall. My suggestion would be to just accept the award, not because it's the right thing to do, but because of the damage it would do to your career and reputation by refusing it. Sometimes you have to do unpleasant things to further your career, and this is a relatively minor one.

Answer 10

Just a few minor points in light of the useful answers already given:

• If a True Scholar should not have interest in fame and prizes, that does not necessarily mean s/he would decline them, it means s/he would not mind them when studying/researching. So your conclusion does not seem to follow from your ethical stance (which I am not judging). At least, it does not necessarily follow. Going to a lot of trouble to refuse an award seems to indicate some level of interest.
• If you had not already decided how to act, I would have encouraged you to give a moment's thought to the following question: Do you believe another person should get the award, or no person should get the award? Assuming it's the latter, I think that a refusal to accept the award phrased not as personal humility but as a principled objection to the system of awards would be less offensive. However, as @faisceaux suggests, in Australia things are more complicated.
• When I was a Teaching Assistant I would often argue against grading students. I mean, obviously you want to mark errors in homework and make comments about the content, and a pass/fail is reasonable (usually) - but I didn't approve of putting people on a scale of who's best, for multiple reasons which I won't go into. Of course I was never made the TA-in-charge of any course I was in.