Past Winners

Prominent Human Rights Activist and Scholar

Chen Guangcheng is perhaps the world’s leading critic of the Chinese Communist Party, its oppression of the Chinese people, and the threat it poses to the United States and to constitutional democracy worldwide. Having escaped from China in 2012, he is now a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Human Rights at the Catholic University of America.

Guangcheng has visited over a dozen countries to speak about the importance of human rights. Through his work on digital platforms, Guangcheng is able to have limitless reach, including into China where his “bootleg” messages are widely distributed. His new YouTube channel, The Barefoot Lawyer Reports, is produced for English speakers throughout the world. Additionally, the Barefoot Lawyer Podcasts provides periodic and deep analysis of current events concerning human rights.

Since beginning his advocacy work, Chen has been the recipient of numerous awards including Time Magazine 100 Most Influential List (2006), The Ramon Magsaysay Award (2007), The Lantos Human Rights Prize (2012), the UK Parliament’s Westminster Award (2013), the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy Courage Award (2014), and the Leopoldo Lopez Freedom and Democracy Award from Kenyon College (2021). He is also Distinguished Senior Fellow in Human Rights at the Witherspoon Institute and Senior Distinguished Advisor to the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice.

Guangcheng was born in 1971 in a remote village in Shandong, China. The son of a poor farmer, Chen was left permanently blind by illness as an infant, and his family had few resources to support him. But despite his disability, he was determined to educate himself, eventually learning to read and write at age 18 when he began attending a school for the blind. He would be the first person in his family to earn a college degree.

At school, Chen was confronted with numerous instances of injustice occurring around him and began speaking out. He took an interest in the law but, being blind, was not permitted to study for a law degree. Over time, with the help of his close family, he taught himself law and began working on legal cases related to issues of civil rights and disability. His successful lawsuit against the Beijing Metro Corporation resulted in free ridership for the blind across China. The international media took notice, eventually dubbing him “the barefoot lawyer,” referencing the rural “barefoot doctors” of the Cultural Revolution. In 2005, Newsweek selected him for its cover.

Living at home in his village, his legal work eventually lead to his investigation into the violent campaign carried out to enforce the so-called One Child Policy. He came under a period of harassment and detention that would last over seven years, including repeated house arrests, unofficial “black jails,” and a four-year prison sentence. After nearly two years of brutal detention in his own home, he escaped his village, later seeking safety at the American embassy in Beijing. High-level diplomatic negotiations secured his travel to the US, where he became a scholar at New York University Law School in 2012. He left NYU to join the Catholic University of America.

His remarkable escape, despite being totally blind, is recounted in Mr. Chen’s memoir, The Barefoot Lawyer: A Blind Man’s Fight for Justice and Freedom in China (Henry Holt Publishers in 2015).

 
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Distinguished Economist and Scholar

Glenn C. Loury is Merton P. Stoltz Professor of Economics at Brown University. He holds the B.A. in Mathematics (Northwestern) and the Ph.D. in Economics (M.I.T). As an economic theorist he has published widely and lectured throughout the world on his research. He is also among America’s leading critics writing on racial inequality. He has been elected as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economics Association, as a Member of the American Philosophical Society and of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, and as a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

 
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Michael W. Grebe is the retired President and Chief Executive Officer of The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Previously, he served as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Partner in the law firm of Foley & Lardner LLP. Mr. Grebe served on the Board of Directors of the Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, Oshkosh Corporation and the Church Mutual Insurance Company, among others. He was a director of the Hoover Institution, a director and board chairman of the Philanthropy Roundtable, and a member and board president of the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Mr. Grebe holds a J.D. from the University of Michigan and a B.S. from the United States Military Academy. Mr. Grebe was awarded a Bradley Prize in 2016 in recognition of his 20 years of outstanding service to the Foundation.

Larry P. Arnn is President of Hillsdale College, a position he has held since 2000. Under his leadership, Hillsdale perpetuates, through liberal education and sound learning, religious liberty and intelligent piety.

From 1977 to 1980, Dr. Arnn studied at the London School of Economics and Oxford University. While in England, he served as Director of Research for Sir Martin Gilbert, the authorized biographer of Sir Winston Churchill. In 2012, Dr. Arnn assumed responsibility for editing the final six document volumes of the Churchill biography due to Sir Martin’s declining health.

Dr. Arnn returned to the United States in 1980 to become an editor for Public Research, Syndicated. In 1985, he became President of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. Later, he was Founding Chair of the California Civil Rights Initiative, or Proposition 209, which passed on the November 1996 ballot.

Dr. Arnn has received numerous awards, among them: an Alcoa Foundation Fellowship; a Richard M. Weaver Fellowship; a Rotary International Fellowship; Earhart Foundation Fellowships; and a Winston S. Churchill Association Fellowship. He has also received the United States Army’s “Outstanding Civilian Service Medal.”

Dr. Arnn is the author of Liberty and Learning: The Evolution of American Education; The Founder’s Key: The Divine and Natural Connection between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It; and most recently, Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government.

Dr. Arnn serves on the boards of directors of many influential conservative organizations. He holds a doctorate in government from The Claremont Graduate School.

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James W. Ceaser is the Harry F. Byrd Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 1976. He is also the director of the Program for Constitutionalism and Democracy at the University of Virginia and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Professor Ceaser has written several books on American politics and political thought, including Presidential Selection, Liberal Democracy and Political Science, Reconstructing America, Nature and History in American Political Development, and Designing a Polity. He has served as the Academic Chairman of the Jack Miller Center for the Teaching of America’s Founding Principles and History since its inception in 2004.

In 1996, the United States Army honored Professor Ceaser with "The Joint Meritorious Unit Award for Total Engagement in the Creation of the George C. Marshall Center for European Security Studies," and President Bush appointed him as a member of the National Archive’s National Historical Publications & Records Commission. In February 2015, Professor Ceaser received the Jeane Kirkpatrick Prize for Academic Freedom.

Professor Ceaser has held visiting professorships at the University of Florence, Oxford University, the University of Basel, Princeton University and the University of Bordeaux. He is a regular contributor to the popular press, most notably The Weekly Standard and Claremont Review of Books, and he comments frequently on American politics for La Voix d’Amérique, the French-African outlet for the Voice of America.

A leading scholar in the fields of public diplomacy and civic education as well as American political thought, Professor Ceaser holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1969. As she grew up, she embraced Islam and strove to live as a devout Muslim. In 1992 Ayaan fled to the Netherlands to escape a forced marriage. There she was given asylum, and in time citizenship. She quickly learned Dutch and was able to study at the University of Leiden.

From 2003 to 2006, Ayaan served as an elected member of the Dutch parliament. She then moved to the US, and in 2007 founded the AHA Foundation to protect and defend the rights of women in the US from harmful traditional practices. Ayaan is a Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at The Harvard Kennedy School, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ayaan is the bestselling author of Infidel (2007), and Heretic: Why Islam Needs A Reformation Now (2015).

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General John M. “Jack” Keane, United States Army, Retired, is president of GSI Consulting. He serves as chairman of the Boards of Directors of the Institute for the Study of War and the Knollwood Foundation, is a director of General Dynamics, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and a former and recent member, for 9 years, of the Secretary of Defense Policy Board. General Keane is also a trustee of Fordham University, the George C. Marshall Foundation and an advisor to two foundations assisting our veterans: Welcome Back Veterans and American Corporate Partners.

General Keane, a four-star general, completed 37 years of public service in 2003, culminating in his appointment as acting Chief of Staff and Vice Chief of Staff of the US Army. General Keane was in the Pentagon on 9/11 and provided oversight and support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since 2004, General Keane conducted frequent trips to Iraq and Afghanistan for senior defense officials. He played a key role in formulating and recommending the surge strategy in Iraq. General Keane continues to advise senior government officials on national security affairs. He also serves as a national security analyst for Fox News and speaks throughout the country on national security and leadership.

General Keane is a career infantry paratrooper, a combat veteran of Vietnam, decorated for valor, who spent much of his military life in operational commands. He commanded the famed 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the legendary 18th Airborne Corps, the Army’s largest war fighting organization.

General Keane graduated from Fordham University with a Bachelor of Science degree and from Western Kentucky University with a Master of Arts degree. He is a graduate of the Army War College and the Command and General Staff College.

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Randy E. Barnett is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and contracts and is the founding director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. After graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he tried many felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County States’ Attorney’s Office in Chicago.

A 2008 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies, Professor Barnett has twice been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He has also visited at Penn, Northwestern, and the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala. In 2000, he delivered the Kobe 2000 lectures in jurisprudence at the University of Tokyo and Doshisha University. In 2011, he received the Charles G. Koch Outstanding IHS Alum Award from the Institute for Humane Studies.

Professor Barnett’s publications includes eleven books, more than one hundred articles and reviews, as well as numerous op-eds. Newly-expanded editions of his books, Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty and The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law were published this year. His other books include Constitutional Law: Cases in Context; Contracts: Cases and Doctrine; and The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Contracts. He is also the coauthor of A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the HealthCare Case.

In 2012, Professor Barnett was one of the lawyers representing the National Federation of Independent Business in its constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act. Previously, he argued the medical marijuana case of Gonzalez v. Raich before the U.S. Supreme Court, after successfully arguing the case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He has also coauthored and submitted numerous amicus briefs to the Supreme Court and to courts of appeals.

Professor Barnett blogs on the Volokh Conspiracy published by The Washington Post, and he regularly publishes opinion pieces in such publications as The Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on network and cable news programs. In 2007, Professor Barnett was featured in the documentaries, The Trials of Law School and In Search of the Second Amendment, and in 2013, he appeared in Constitution USA with Peter Sagal on PBS. He portrayed an assistant prosecutor in the science fiction film InAlienable, released in 2010.

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Darcy Olsen is President of the Goldwater Institute, a public policy research and legal center. Her leadership has been critical to the Institute’s success, including the development and enactment of nearly 200 reforms and the protection of multiple constitutional rights in state and federal courts.

When Ms. Olsen took the helm of the Goldwater Institute, she reorganized the Institute’s structure to parallel a private company focused on results. Her vision has made the Goldwater Institute a national leader in restoring America as a compound republic, where states exercise their constitutional authority to check and limit federal power. An authority on education reform, economic policy, and government reform, Ms. Olsen is a regular guest on national public affairs programs. Her opinions have been widely published in news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Review.

Ms. Olsen has received numerous honors, including the State Policy Network’s Roe Award for achievement in public policy. One of her most unexpected awards occurred when Hockey Magazine named her the “64th most powerful person in hockey” for her leading role in blocking a multi-million subsidy to a National Hockey League team.

Ms. Olsen unofficially began her public policy career at 11 years old, when she went door-to-door gathering signatures on a homemade petition to stop animal abuse. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and New York University. She is a foster mother and an adoptive mother of two, and counting.

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Kimberley Strassel is a member of the editorial board for The Wall Street Journal. She writes editorials, as well as the weekly Potomac Watch political column, from her base in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Strassel joined Dow Jones & Company in 1994, working with The Wall Street Journal Europe’s Central European Economic Review in Brussels. She moved to London in 1996 as a reporter covering technology and in 1999 transferred to New York to cover commercial real estate. Soon thereafter, she joined the Journal’s editorial page, working as a features editor and then as an editorial writer. She assumed her current position in 2005.

Ms. Strassel was a finalist for a Loeb award in 2007 for writing on asbestos litigation, and in 2005 for her investigative reporting on former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s probe of the New York Stock Exchange. In 2001, she received a Front Page Award for Internet commentary from the Newswomen’s Club of New York.

In Washington, Ms. Strassel is a regular contributor to the Sunday political shows, including Fox News Sunday, NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and ABC’s “This Week.” She is also a co-author of Leaving Women Behind: Modern Families, Outdated Laws, which argues that government regulation interferes with free market incentives to provide women with economic opportunity.

An Oregon native, Ms. Strassel earned a bachelor’s degree in Public Policy and International Affairs from Princeton University. She lives in Virginia with her husband and three children.

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