Winners of the 2021 Abraham J. Briloff Prize
April 4, 2022
The Winners of the Abraham J. Briloff Prizes for 2021
All students and members of the Baruch College faculty are invited each year to submit their work and that of their students for the Abraham J. Briloff Prizes in Ethics. The prizes are funded by a gift from alumnus Charles R. Dreifus (’66, MBA ’73) in honor of Abraham J. Briloff, Emanuel Saxe Distinguished Professor of Accountancy Emeritus.
Abraham J. Briloff taught bookkeeping and stenography in high school beginning in the late 1930s, then moved on to teach accounting at Baruch College. By the late 1960s he had become a critic of unethical practice in the accounting profession. He remained affiliated with Baruch through the rest of his life. The Briloff Prize is an award in the spirit of Professor Briloff’s interest in normative ethics. The emphasis of the Briloff prizes is ethics in professional life; to wit, ethics in the broadest sense.
The awards committee comprises one member of the faculty of each school. The faculty prize is $1500; the student award is $500.
Links to both of the winning essays (as well as past essays) will soon appear of the web page for the Abraham J. Briloff Prizes: https://provost.baruch.cuny.edu/facultyhandbook/briloffprizes/
Faculty Winner for 2021: Professor Marc Edelman, Department of Law
For “Reimagining the Governance of College Sports After Alston,” a co-authored article, forthcoming in the Florida Law Review
Notes from the Briloff Committee: “Reimagining the Governance of College Sports After Alston” is a comprehensive study that shows how the NCAA, which began as an organization to protect the safety of student athletes, developed into the present money-making colossus in which the welfare of student athletes is clearly secondary to the many factors involved in its commercial calculations. The essay weaves together dozens of legal decisions, focusing on the recent Supreme Court Alston decision that found the NCAA to be a conspiracy in constraint of trade. The essay concludes with proposals for restructuring the NCAA in the wake of Alston. The judges admired the commitment of the author[s] to justice for the students who give their all on the field, often for surprisingly little return and at the risk of permanent or life-altering injuries.
Student Winner for 2021: Shreshth Jain-Hutchison, senior, double majoring in Philosophy and Psychology
For “Parallel Braids,” an essay written for Prof. Alexander Steers-McCrum’s course, Philosophy of Race
Notes from the Briloff Committee: “Parallel Braids” argues that the fight for gay liberation is not over, since the acceptance of gays and gay marriage in the USA is keyed to acceptance of homo normalis, that is, gay people who look like Anderson Cooper or Pete Buttigieg. In exploring the concept of identity formation, the author focuses on three specific dimensions to show that how one is perceived can affect how one is treated: “the physical aesthetic (looking the part), gendered performativity (acting the part), and socio-political goals (thinking the part).” The judges found that the paper contains a useful analysis that could be considered a combination of personal identity and identity politics, as the way that one is perceived can greatly affect how one ultimately is treated within a society. A truly liberal society will embrace people who look or behave in ways that subvert the norms as well as those who seek shelter by conforming to them. One of the implied questions discussed in the essay is whether or not morality has a role in the identities that we adopt while a related question asks what role, if any, should the government play in the formation and maintenance of identities considered outside of the mainstream of accepted behavior.