Kern & Nebel Win Sanders Political Philosophy Prize

The Marc Sanders Foundation has announced that its 2026 Prize in Political Philosophy has been awarded to Adam Kern (University of San Diego) and Jacob Nebel (Princeton University).

Adam Kern & Jake Nebel

They received the prize for their piece, “Migration and Social Population Ethics“. Here’s the abstract:

This paper explores how societies should evaluate choices that affect the size or the composition of their populations through migration, a subject that we call “social population ethics.” We build a framework for theorizing about social population ethics, within which we advance two substantive claims. First, we propose a desideratum for any theory of social population ethics, according to which “mere migration” is neutral from a social perspective: societies should be indifferent to migration that makes no one better or worse off. Second, we show that natural extensions of this neutrality are inconsistent with plausible distributive principles. We call this result the “Mere Migration Paradox.” While we do not come down in favor of any one response to the Mere Migration Paradox, we take it to provide some reason to doubt the existence of distinctively intrasocial distributive principles, or else to favor a highly expansive view of what those principles require with respect to migration.

According to an announcement from the MSF:

Judges described the project as “a ground-breaking project that considers the comparison of societal arrangements that differ with respect to the size and constitution of the population, in the ordinary context of migration, as opposed to the standard context of procreation and associated possible future people.” They found it to be “a highly original paper that introduces a new set of questions for theorizing about distributive justice. The paper asks, how can we operationalise the idea that special distributive principles may apply within societies, allowing for the possibility that the population of a society may change? An illuminating formal model is introduced to clarify the comparison of outcomes from the perspective of a particular society. And a new paradox – the Mere Migration Paradox – is introduced, which in turn provides grounds for doubting the plausibility of intra-social distributive principles.”

The prize is $5000 and publication of the paper in Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy.

You can learn more about the prize, including its past winners, here.