Jane Kamensky, President and CEO of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Awarded 2026 Barry Prize

Jane Kamensky, president and CEO of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History emerita at Harvard University, has received a 2026 Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement from the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. The prize was conferred on November 4 by Academy President Dr. Donald Landry, MD., PhD., of Columbia University in a ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. 

The Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement is the Academy’s premier initiative to promote excellence in scholarship. This prestigious annual prize, open to scholars across diverse fields and disciplines, honors those whose work has made outstanding contributions to humanity's understanding and cultivation of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Recipients are nominated by the members of the Academy and appointed by the board of directors; upon receipt of the prize, they also become members of the Academy. 

Jane Kamensky’s citation for the 2026 Barry Prize reads: 

As an academic historian and as president of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Jane Kamensky has helped the American people to know themselves more fully by understanding the history of their founding and early development. Through kaleidoscopic lenses including art, finance, race, language, sexuality, and households great and small, she has helped our Nation embrace a story that is coherent and humane, while also honest in its faithfulness to complex realities. The Academy honors Dr. Kamensky’s distinguished contribution to humanity’s understanding of the many dimensions of the early American experiment. 

The American Academy of Sciences and Letters promotes scholarship and honors outstanding achievement in the arts, sciences, and learned professions. To these ends, the Academy awards 10 Barry Prizes each year, honoring scholars of extraordinary achievement and dedication to excellence in the arts, sciences, and learned professions. The full list of 2026 Barry Prize recipients is below.  

2026 Barry Prize Recipients

Lara M. Buchak, Princeton University  

G. Marius Clore FRS, National Institutes of Health 

G. Marcus Cole, University of Notre Dame 

Farr A. Curlin, Duke University  

Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, University of Pennsylvania  

Alexander B. Givental, University of California-Berkeley 

Jane Kamensky, Harvard University  

Bertha Kalifon Madras, Harvard University  

Harvey C. Mansfield, Harvard University  

Steven Pinker, Harvard University  

About the Academy

The American Academy of Sciences and Letters promotes scholarship and honors outstanding achievement in the arts, sciences, and learned professions. It encourages the fruitful exchange of ideas within academia and society at large by sponsoring occasions for scholarly interaction and providing platforms for the presentation and dissemination of scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering. An independent 501(c)(3) non-partisan organization, it offers public programming, supports promising young scholars, and promotes traditional liberal arts ideals and standards of intellectual excellence.   

Academy Board of Trustees

William B. Allen, Michigan State University, Emeritus 

Brandice Canes-Wrone, Stanford University 

Margaret S. Chisolm, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine 

Carlos M. N. Eire, Yale University 

Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard Law School, Emerita 

Barry H. Honig, Columbia University 

Sergiu Klainerman, Princeton University 

Sanjeev R. Kulkarni (Chair), Princeton University 

Donald W. Landry (President), Columbia University 

Santiago Schnell, Dartmouth 

For more on the Academy, visit https://academysciencesletters.org/ or follow us at https://x.com/AASL_Academy. 

About Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation was incorporated in 1923 to preserve Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, in Charlottesville, Virginia. As a civic institution, Monticello seeks to increase knowledge and share the ideals Jefferson articulated in the Declaration of Independence through programming and scholarship built upon a foundation of rigorous research.  

Monticello is recognized as a National Historic Landmark, a United Nations World Heritage Site, and a Site of Conscience. As a private, nonprofit organization, Monticello receives no ongoing local, state, or federal funding. Visitors and the generosity of donors make Monticello’s twofold mission of preservation and education possible. For information, visit monticello.org.