Eboo Patel, the founder and executive director of an organization that promotes religious pluralism and is active on 50 American college campuses, will receive the 2010 Grawemeyer Award in Religion, the University of Louisville has announced.

Mr. Patel, a former Rhodes scholar who holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion, was honored for his 2007 autobiography, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation (Beacon Press), in which he describes his own life story as an India-born Muslim raised in America. The autobiography shows how an angry youth can be transformed into a leader for peace, according to the award announcement.

The organization Mr. Patel founded, Interfaith Youth Core, works to build mutual respect and pluralism among young people of different religious traditions by focusing on shared values and community service.

"Religious extremists all over the world are harnessing adolescent angst for their own ends," Susan R. Garrett, a professor at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary who directs the award, said in the announcement. Mr. Patel "urges us to take advantage of the short window of time in a young person's life to teach the universal values of cooperation, compassion, and mercy."

The award is one of five Grawemeyer prizes that are presented each year in recognition of achievements in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The awards were created in 1984 by H. Charles Grawemeyer, a University of Louisville alumnus, and are given by the Grawemeyer Foundation. Each prize carries a $200,000 cash award.

The recipients of the 2010 prizes in music composition, for ideas improving world order, in psychology, and in education were announced earlier this week. More information about the awards and their recipients is available on the organization's Web site. —Charles Huckabee