Kirk Center offers Richard D. McLellan Prizes to recognize champions of free speech
The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal is offering multiple prizes to promote free speech and its impact on other individual freedoms.
The Richard D. McLellan Prizes will award a total of $75,000 to honor individuals who embrace the principles of free expression.
The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal is offering multiple prizes to promote free speech and its impact on other individual freedoms.
The Richard D. McLellan Prizes will award a total of $75,000 to honor individuals who embrace the principles of free expression.
The awards include a $50,000 grand prize that “recognizes and encourages the best writing, creative works, actions, and new media communications in the area of Freedom of Speech and Expression.” Two additional $12,500 prizes will support free speech research projects.
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“Through the generous support of Richard D. McLellan, the Prizes program that bears his name will annually award a $50,000 prize that recognizes and encourages the best writing, creative works, actions, and new media communications in the area of Freedom of Speech and Expression,” the center’s website states.
The nonprofit also hopes that such awards will also “incentivize … writers and related thinkers to advocate afresh for the central importance of the First Amendment’s defense of the freedom of speech.”
The center is accepting nominations for the prizes until July 1.
The McLellan Prizes were created last year as part of the organization’s commitment to free speech and expression. On the prize’s web page, the center also emphasizes that First Amendment rights represent an essential aspect of American identity that demands defense.
“Freedom of expression and the guarantees of the First Amendment are among our most cherished, and hard won, liberties,” the page reads. “Their benefits can be hard to see, though they are fundamental to who we are as Americans.”
Greg Lukianoff, the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression won the $50,000 prize last year.
The Michigan-based nonprofit, named after the iconic American conservative intellectual, is dedicated “to recover, conserve, and enliven those enduring norms and principles that Russell Kirk called the Permanent Things,” including family values and political order.
Campus Reform contacted the Russell Kirk Center for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
