Berkeley's 2026 University Medalist: Charles Long
Charles Long has been awarded the University Medal, given each year to UC Berkeley’s top graduating senior.
At 43, Long is a sociology and social welfare double major. Through his studies of policing and violence, he has harnessed his childhood struggle, time incarcerated and experience as a nontraditional student to positively impact those around him — from peers in the classroom to people in juvenile hall and prison.
Long already had the credentials of many top graduates: a 4.0 GPA, sterling letters of recommendation and numerous examples of community service. In a letter of recommendation, Laleh Behbehanian, a continuing lecturer in the Department of Sociology, wrote that Long’s ability to blend theoretical, analytic and critical thinking placed him among the most outstanding students she’d encountered in her 23 years of teaching.
“His contributions to class discussions, shaped by his own experiences being formerly incarcerated and growing up in the foster care system, had a profound impact on his peers in the class,” Behbehanian wrote. “Charles is a brilliant young scholar whose potential is unparalleled among his peers.”
Since his first days on campus, Long’s work as a mentor and teacher inside juvenile halls and San Quentin State Prison has shaped his sociology and social welfare research. Those experiences have inspired him to improve the carceral system from the outside and inside.
“I once had my future taken from me by a system that called itself justice,” he wrote in his university medalist essay. “Berkeley gave me the credentials, credibility and restoration of spirit to return to those same systems — this time with tools, language and purpose.”
Read the full story on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2026/05/12/a-system-that-called-itself-justice-took-his-future-uc-berkeley-helped-him-take-it-back/
Video: Charlotte Buchen Khadra
Assistant editor: Andrei Valladolid
Additional camera: JohnMatthew Garcia
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