The annual James A. Perkins Prize for Interracial Understanding and Harmony at Cornell University will be awarded during a ceremony Wednesday, April 5, 4:30-6 p.m. in the Memorial Room of Willard Straight Hall on campus.

Cornell trustee Thomas W. Jones, Cornell Class of 1969, MRP '72, established the $5,000 Perkins Prize in 1994 to promote efforts for the advancement of campus interracial understanding and harmony and to honor the "historic decision" by the late Cornell President Emeritus James A. Perkins, who was president from 1963 to 1969, to increase the enrollment of minority students during the unsettled 1960s. Jones, the chair and CEO of Citigroup's SSB Citi Asset Management Group, one of the largest asset management firms in the world, and vice chair of its parent company, Travelers Group, was a Cornell undergraduate and participant in the student takeover of Willard Straight Hall in 1969. He will attend the ceremony and congratulate the winners.

The event, open to the Cornell community, will be hosted by Cornell President Hunter Rawlings.