Past Winners

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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Terry Teachout is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, the critic-at-large of Commentary, and the author of “Sightings,” a biweekly column for the Friday Journal about the arts in America. He also writes about the arts for National Review and other magazines, as well as on his blog, “About Last Night.” His first play, Satchmo at the Waldorf, was premiered in 2011 in Orlando, Florida, and has since been produced off Broadway and regionally in Lenox, Mass., New Haven, Conn., and Philadelphia. His most recent book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington.

Mr. Teachout’s previous books include Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine, A Terry Teachout Reader, and The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken. He has also written the libretti for three operas by Paul Moravec, The Letter, Danse Russe, and The King’s Man, and is the editor of Beyond the Boom: New Voices on American Life, Culture, and Politics and Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers, 1931-1959. He was a contributor to The Oxford Companion to Jazz and Robert Gottlieb’s Reading Dance and has written track notes for Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology.

Mr. Teachout served on the National Council on the Arts from 2004 to 2010. In 2012 he was a MacDowell Colony Fellow and received a Guggenheim Fellowship to support the completion of Duke. He has also been a scholar in residence at Rollins College’s Winter Park Institute, where he worked on Duke, Pops, and Satchmo at the Waldorf.

A graduate of William Jewell College, Mr. Teachout played jazz bass professionally in Kansas City from 1975 to 1983, also working as a music critic for the Kansas City Star. Since then he has been an editor of Harper’s, an editorial writer for the New York Daily News, the News’ classical music and dance critic, and the classical music and dance critic of Time magazine. 

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Roger Ailes serves as the Chairman and CEO of FOX News as well as the Chairman of Fox Television Stations. In this position, Ailes oversees all national operations for FOX News and serves as a senior advisor to Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of the News Corporation Limited. He also has oversight of Fox’s 27 broadcast television stations and Twentieth’s Television’s syndication group. Recognized by U.S. News and World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders in 2005, Ailes was also awarded The Media Institute’s Freedom of Speech Award, as well as the Radio and Television News Directors Association First Amendment Leadership Award.

Since joining FOX News in February 1996, Ailes created FOX’s first weekly public affairs show, FOX News Sunday, which has one of the youngest median ages amongst the Sunday talk shows and is now available nationwide. Ailes also oversaw the successful creation and launch of FOX News Channel (FNC), FOX’s 24-hour cable news channel, the fastest growing news network in the country which currently reaches more than 90 million homes. In January 2002, FNC passed CNN in ratings in all day parts and became the number one news channel in America. On October 15, 2007 Ailes launched the Fox Business Network, a 24 hour financial news channel.

Prior to FOX, Ailes was President of CNBC, NBC’s business news and talk network, beginning in September 1993. Under his leadership, CNBC established itself as the leading source for business news and became the fastest growing major cable network.

in America. During his tenure at the network, ratings more than tripled and profits increased from $9 million to over $100 million. Ailes also oversaw CNBC’s 1995 worldwide expansion to Europe and Asia. In addition, Ailes was President of America’s Talking (A-T), an information talk channel, which later became MSNBC. Between A-T and CNBC, he was responsible for more live programming than any other television executive in America – 31 ½ hours daily. He also created the CNBC “Talk-All-Stars” concept attracting such notable stars as Tim Russert, Geraldo Rivera, Chris Matthews, Dee Dee Myers and Gerry Spence, which dramatically increased CNBC’s prime time ratings. Ailes’ television roots are deep and well established. In 1965, at age 25, Ailes rose from prop boy to executive producer of “The Mike Douglas Show.” Under his supervision, the show was nominated for two Emmy awards and won its first Emmy in 1967, becoming the most-watched syndicated talk show in America.

Over the years, Ailes also produced several television specials, including: the Emmy Award-winning and nationally syndicated “Television and the Presidency,” featuring historian Theodore H. White; “Television: Our Life and Times,” a nationally syndicated two-hour retrospective of television entertainment programs; a nationally syndicated documentary on the legendary Italian film director Federico Fellini, and an hour-long wildlife special, “The Last Frontier,” with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

In 1981, Ailes served as Executive Producer of the NBC program “Tomorrow: Coast to Coast.” Additionally, in 1991, after the Gulf War, Ailes was Co-Executive Producer of “An All-Star Salute to Our Troops,” a two-hour entertainment special, which aired on the CBS Television Network.

For more than two decades, Ailes has worked as a top consultant and/or executive producer for several major television projects, including work for Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount Television. From 1970-1992, he owned Ailes Communications, Inc., a diversified communications consulting company whose clients included three U.S. Presidents, several senators and governors, as well as Fortune 500 CEO’s. In 1992, Ailes retired completely from political and corporate consulting to return full-time to television. In 1987, Ailes authored a critically acclaimed communications book, You Are the Message (Doubleday), recognized as “one of the year’s best” by Wall Street Journal.

Ailes recently completed a three-year term as a board member of the National Hemophilia Foundation, a member of the Director’s Guild of America and a Trustee of the National Trust for Historic Gettysburg. He is a native of Warren, Ohio and a graduate of Ohio University, which awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Communications in 1990.

In 1999, Ailes was awarded the Silver Circle Award by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In 2001, 2002, 2006 and 2007 respectively, Television Week (formerly Electronic Media) named Ailes the Most Powerful Person in TV News. He was also named Broadcasting & Cable’s first-ever Television Journalist of the Year in 2003 and Advertising Age’s TV Marketer of the Year in 2002. Ailes was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Pepperdine University in December 2007. In October 2008, he was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame, and received the Navy SEAL Patriot Award. In 2011, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society honored Ailes with the John Reagan (Tex) McCrary Award for Excellence in Journalism.

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Paul D. Clement is a partner at Bancroft PLLC. Mr. Clement served as the 43rd Solicitor General of the United States from June 2005 until June 2008. Before his confirmation as Solicitor General, he served as Acting Solicitor General for nearly a year and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General for over three years. He has argued over 65 cases before the United States Supreme Court, including McConnell v. FEC, Tennessee v. Lane, Rumsfeld v. Padilla, Credit Suisse v. Billing, United States v. Booker, MGM v. Grokster, McDonald v. Chicago, and NFIB v. Sebelius. He has argued before the Supreme Court 16 times in just the last two Terms, an unprecedented number for a lawyer in private practice. Indeed, Mr. Clement has argued more Supreme Court cases since 2000 than any lawyer in or out of government. Mr. Clement has also argued many important cases in the lower courts, including Walker v. Cheney, United States v. Moussaoui and NFL v. Brady.

Mr. Clement is a native of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and a graduate of the Cedarburg public schools. He received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and a master’s degree in economics from Cambridge University. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was the Supreme Court editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Following graduation, Mr. Clement clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Mr. Clement went on to serve as Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights.

Mr. Clement has been an Adjunct or Visiting Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center since 1998, where he teaches a seminar on the separation of powers. He also serves as a Senior Fellow of the Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute.

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