Past Winners

An international religious leader, philosopher, award-winning author and respected moral voice, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was recently named the winner of the 2016 Templeton Prize in recognition of his “exceptional contributions to affirming life's spiritual dimension.” Described by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales as “a light unto this nation” and by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as “an intellectual giant”, Rabbi Sacks is a frequent and sought after contributor to radio, television and the press both in Britain and around the world.

Since stepping down as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth – a position he served for 22 years between 1991 and 2013 – Rabbi Sacks has held a number of professorships at several academic institutions including Yeshiva University and King’s College London. He currently serves as the Ingeborg and Ira Rennert Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. Rabbi Sacks has been awarded 17 honorary doctorates including a Doctor of Divinity conferred to mark his first ten years in office as Chief Rabbi, by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey.

Rabbi Sacks is the author of over 25 books. His most recent work, Not in God’s Name was awarded a 2015 National Jewish Book Award in America and was a top ten Sunday Times bestseller in the UK. Past works include The Great Partnership and The Dignity of Difference, winner of the Grawemeyer Prize for Religion in 2004 for its success in defining a framework for interfaith dialogue between people of all faith and of none.

In recognition of his work, Rabbi Sacks has also received the Jerusalem Prize in 1995 for his contribution to diaspora Jewish life and The Ladislaus Laszt Ecumenical and Social Concern Award from Ben Gurion University in Israel in 2011. He was named as The Becket Fund’s 2014 Canterbury Medalist for his role in the defense of religious liberty in the public square. Rabbi Sacks was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen in 2005 and made a Life Peer, taking his seat in the House of Lords in October 2009.

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Andrew Roberts read modern history at Caius College, Cambridge, from where he is an honorary senior scholar and Ph.D. He has written twelve books, including Salisbury: Victorian Titan (which won the Wolfson Prize and the James Stern Silver Pen Award); Napoleon and Wellington; A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 (which won the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Book Award); Masters and Commanders: How Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Alanbrooke Won the War in the West 1941-45 (which won the Emery Reves Award); The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (which won the British Army Military Book Award); and Napoleon: A Life (which won The Los Angeles Times Biography Prize and the Grand Prix of the Fondation Napoléon).

Professor Roberts is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; a trustee of the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust and the National Portrait Gallery; chairman of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Military Book Prize; the Lehrman Institute Distinguished Fellow at the New York Historical Society; and a visiting professor at the War Studies Department of King’s College, London. He has delivered the prestigious White House Lecture. Professor Roberts has lectured at Princeton, Yale and Stanford, and he was a visiting professor of history at Cornell.

Professor Roberts serves on the academic boards of five conservative research institutes and organizations, and he is a founding member of the Friends of Israel Initiative. He lives in London with his wife Susan Gilchrist and children Henry and Cassia.

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Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute. A social scientist and writer, he is the author of Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980; In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government; The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (with Richard J. Herrnstein); and Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. His most recent book is By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission.

In addition to these and other books, Dr. Murray’s work includes articles in The Public Interest, Commentary, and The New Republic as well as in professional journals and leading national newspapers. He has lectured and led seminars at universities and research institutions here and abroad, testified before congressional committees, and participated in numerous panels and conferences for government officials, elected officials, and visiting dignitaries.

Dr. Murray began his career in 1965 as a Peace Corps Volunteer attached to the Thai Ministry of Health. He subsequently worked as a researcher for US-AID and later as a behavioral scientist at the American Institutes for Research where he specialized in the evaluation of social programs. From 1982-1990, Dr. Murray was a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

In 2009, Dr. Murray received the Irving Kristol Award from the American Enterprise Institute. In 2015, he received the Edmund Burke Award from The New Criterion. Dr. Murray holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in history from Harvard University.

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Christopher DeMuth is a distinguished fellow at Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He was president of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research from 1986 to 2008 and D.C. Searle Senior Fellow at AEI from 2009 to 2011.

Mr. DeMuth grew up in Kenilworth, Illinois, on Chicago’s North Shore, and graduated from The Lawrenceville School (1964), Harvard College (AB 1968), and the University of Chicago Law School (JD 1973). He has served two tours in government — as staff assistant to President Richard Nixon in 1969 to 1970, working on urban and environmental policy, and, during President Ronald Reagan’s first term, as administrator for information and regulatory affairs in the Office of Management and Budget and executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief. In 1968, he managed James Farmer’s unsuccessful campaign for U.S. Congress in New York’s 12th congressional district.

From 1977 to 1981, Mr. DeMuth taught at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and directed the Harvard Faculty Project on Regulation. He has also practiced law with Sidley & Austin in Chicago, 1973 to 1976, and with the Consolidated Rail Corporation in Philadelphia, 1976 to1977. In addition, Mr. DeMuth has been an economic consultant with Lexecon Inc. and was publisher and editor-in-chief of Regulation magazine in 1986. He is a director of State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, chairman of the AHA Foundation, co-chairman of the Board of Visitors of the Federalist Society, a governor of the Smith Richardson Foundation, and a senior fellow of Scalia Law School’s Center for the Study of the Administrative State.

Mr. DeMuth’s previous affiliations include president of the board of directors of the Constitutional Enterprises Corporation (then-owner of National Review), grant advisor of the Searle Freedom Trust, director of Donors Capital Fund, member of the Visiting Committees of the University of Chicago Law School and the Kennedy School of Government, and chairman of several family businesses. His writings have appeared in numerous academic publications and in newspapers and opinion magazines such as the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard.

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Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. Before coming to Columbia, he was the John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School, where he was the Director of the Bigelow Program and the Legal History Program. Earlier, Professor Hamburger was the Oswald Symyster Colclough Research Professor at George Washington University Law School and a Professor at the University of Connecticut Law School. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Virginia Law School and at Northwestern Law School, where he was the Jack N. Pritzker Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law. He also practiced law in business and in corporate tax.

Professor Hamburger writes on religious liberty, freedom of speech and the press, judicial office, administrative power, unconstitutional conditions, and other questions of constitutional law and its history.

Professor Hamburger is the author of Separation of Church and State (Harvard 2002), Law and Judicial Duty (Harvard 2008), and most recently Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Chicago 2014). His recent articles include: Chevron Bias (George Washington Law Review, 2016); Equality and Exclusion: How Exclusion from the Political Process Renders Religious Liberty Unequal (Notre Dame Law Review, 2015); Inversion of Rights and Power (Buffalo Law Review, 2015); IRB Licensing, in Who’s Afraid of Academic Freedom (Columbia University Press, 2014); The Censorship You’ve Never Heard Of, (Commentary, July 2013); and Unconstitutional Conditions: The Irrelevance of Consent (Virginia Law Review, 2012).

Professor Hamburger is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has served on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. He has twice received the Sutherland Prize for the most significant contribution to English legal history, and he has been awarded the Henry Paolucci - Walter Bagehot Book Award and the Hayek Book Prize.

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Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He also serves as dean of students for the Hertog Political Studies Program and for The Public Interest Fellowship, and he teaches for the Tikvah Fund in the United States and in Israel.

Dr. Berkowitz is the author of Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government, and Political Moderation (Hoover Institution Press, 2013); Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War (Hoover Institution Press, 2012); Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 1999); and Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist (Harvard University Press, 1995).

A leading public intellectual, Dr. Berkowitz is an advocate of classically liberal education. He is a contributor at RealClearPolitics and has written hundreds of articles, essays, and reviews on a range of subjects for a variety of publications, including The American Interest, the American Political Science Review, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Claremont Review of Books, Commentary, First Things, Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, National Journal, National Review, The New Criterion, The New Republic, Policy Review, Politico, The Public Interest, the Times Literary Supplement, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, The Wilson Quarterly, and The Yale Law Journal.

In addition to teaching regularly in the United States and Israel, Dr. Berkowitz has led seminars on the principles of freedom and the American constitutional tradition for students from Burma at the George W. Bush Presidential Center and for Korean students at Underwood International College at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. From 1999 to 2006, he taught constitutional law and jurisprudence at George Mason University School of Law. From 1990 to 1999, he taught political philosophy in the department of government at Harvard University.

Dr. Berkowitz holds a J.D. and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University; an M.A. in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and a B.A. in English literature from Swarthmore College.

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Walter E. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University as the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics since 1980. He has also served on the faculties of Los Angeles City College, California State University Los Angeles, Temple University, and Grove City College.

Dr. Williams is the author of over 150 articles which have appeared in scholarly journals and popular publications. He is also the author of ten books, including: America: The State Against Blacks, which was made into the PBS documentary Good Intentions; Do the Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks; Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed On Discrimination? and Up From The Projects: An Autobiography, which was made into the PBS documentary Suffer No Fools.

Dr. Williams writes a nationally syndicated weekly column that is carried by 140 newspapers and several web sites. He has made television appearances on Nightline; Firing Line; Face the Nation; Milton Friedman’s Free To Choose; Crossfire; MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour; and Wall Street Week. In addition, Dr. Williams was a regular commentator for CNBC’s Nightly Business Report, and he was an occasional substitute host for the Rush Limbaugh show for 20 years.

Dr. Williams has received numerous awards, among them the Fund for American Studies’ David Jones Lifetime Achievement Award; Foundation for Economic Education’s Adam Smith Award; Valley Forge Freedoms Foundation’s George Washington Medal of Honor; and Veterans of Foreign Wars’ U.S. News Media Award. He has also received fellowships from the Hoover Institution and Ford Foundation. A member of the Mont Pelerin Society and American Economic Association, Dr. Williams has participated in numerous debates, conferences and lectures in the United States and abroad. He has frequently given expert testimony before Congressional committees on public policy issues ranging from labor policy to taxation and spending.

Dr. Williams holds a B.A. in economics from California State University, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA. He also holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Union University and Grove City College, Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College and Doctor Honoris Causa en Ciencias Sociales from Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala, at which he is Professor Honorario.

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Charles R. Kesler is a Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute, Editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and the Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College.

Dr. Kesler also teaches in the Claremont Institute’s annual Publius and Lincoln Fellows Programs. From 1989 to 2008, Dr. Kesler was director of the Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World at Claremont McKenna College. From 2000 to 2001, he served as vice chairman of the Advisory Committee to the U.S. Congress's James Madison Commemoration Commission.

In 2017, Dr. Kesler was named as one of the “Politico 50” - the publication’s annual list of the key thinkers, doers and visionaries who are reshaping American politics and policy.In 2000, he was selected as a member of the Scholars Commission on the Jefferson-Hemings Issue sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society.

Dr. Kesler is the author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism; the editor of Saving the Revolution: The Federalist Papers and the American Founding; co-editor, with John B. Kienker, of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Ten Years of the Claremont Review of Books; and co-editor, with William F. Buckley, Jr., of Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought. He has written extensively on American constitutionalism and political thought, and his edition of The Federalist Papers is the best-selling edition in the country.

Dr. Kesler received his B.A. in Social Studies and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University. His work appears frequently in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Post, Claremont Review of Books, National Review, Real Clear Politics, and The Federalist.

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Allen C. Guelzo is Director of Civil War Era Studies and the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. During 2017-18, he has served as Visiting Professor in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

Dr. Guelzo is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, which won both the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize in 2000; Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, which also won the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize in 2005; Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America; Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas; and Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction. In 2012 he published Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction and in 2013 Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, which won the 2014 Lincoln Prize, the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History, the Fletcher Pratt Award of the New York City Round Table, and the Richard Harwell Award of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table. His most recent publications are Redeeming the Great Emancipator and Reconstruction: A Concise History.

Dr. Guelzo has been awarded the Lincoln Medal of the Union League Club of New York City, the Lincoln Award of the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia, and the Lincoln Award of the Union League of Philadelphia, in addition to the James Q. Wilson Award for Distinguished Scholarship on the Nature of a Free Society. He has been a Fellow of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University.

Dr. Guelzo has written for the New York Times; Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; The Wall Street Journal; Christian Science Monitor; National Affairs; First Things; U.S. News & World Report; The Weekly Standard; Washington Monthly; National Review; Daily Beast; and Claremont Review of Books. Additionally, he has been featured on NPR; The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; Meet the Press; Great Divide Pictures’ The Civil War: The Untold Story; CNN’s Race to the White House: Lincoln vs. Douglas; and Brian Lamb’s Booknotes.

From 2006 to 2013, Dr. Guelzo served as a member of the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, where he worked for more than 20 years writing opinion pieces on politics, economics, education, immigration and race, among other subjects. He is also a frequent public speaker and provides commentary for Fox News, ABC, NBC, CNN, PBS, NPR and other news outlets.

After joining the Wall Street Journal in 1994, Mr. Riley was named a senior editorial page writer in 2000 and a member of the Editorial Board in 2005. He joined the Manhattan Institute in 2015. In 2008 he published his first book, Let Them In, which argues for a more free-market oriented U.S. immigration system. His second book, Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make it Harder for Blacks to Succeed, analyzes the track record of government efforts to help the black underclass. Published in 2017, his most recent book, False Black Power? assesses why black political success has not translated into more economic success.

Born in Buffalo, New York, Mr. Riley earned a bachelor's degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has also worked for USA Today and the Buffalo News. He lives in suburban New York City.

 
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