Every few years, the Havens Center bestows the Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship on an individual whose work and career has demonstrated a distinguished and extensive record of scholarly achievement in the critical tradition of social thought as well as a strong commitment to social justice. To date, recipients have included:
- Frances Fox Piven (2004)
- Howard Zinn (2006)
- Noam Chomsky (2010)
- Eduardo Galeano (2013)
- Barbara Ehrenreich (2014)
- Tariq Ali (2018)