2025 Mickey Shapiro Free Speech Fellows Announced
The Kirk Center is pleased to introduce our other McLellan Prizes fellowships cohort, including the Mickey Shapiro Free Speech Fellows. Each Shapiro Fellow will receive a $12,500 fellowship to pursue writing, research, or new media projects advancing America’s free speech tradition. We are happy to introduce the first group of named Mickey Shapiro Free Speech Fellows for 2025.
Mickey Shapiro is a respected developer from Michigan who holds ownership interests in real estate projects throughout the United States. His accomplishments in the real estate industry only scratch the surface of his remarkable life. Born in a displaced persons camp in Germany, Mr. Shapiro came to the United States at the age of two.
He recently honored his late mother with the feature film “My Name is Sara,” which has earned numerous awards. After escaping a Jewish Ghetto in Poland and losing her family during the Holocaust, his mother Sara Goralnik passed as an Orthodox Christian in the Ukraine, where she was taken in by a farmer and his wife. Still a child herself, around the age of 12, Sara worked on the farm and cared for the couple’s two young boys. Produced in association with USC Shoah Foundation, the film was an Official Selection at more than 50 festivals internationally, taking home five Best Feature Awards.
Mickey Shapiro’s unwavering dedication to philanthropy has made a remarkable impact on the world. His appointment to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council by President Bush in 2002 was a pivotal moment that ignited his lifelong passion for preserving history and advancing education through his contributions to esteemed institutions such as the USC Shoah Foundation and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
His contributions extend beyond the realms of real estate and philanthropy. He has played a pivotal role in establishing crucial medical facilities like the Sara and Asa Shapiro Heart and Vascular Intensive Care Unit at Beaumont Hospital. In addition, he has also made significant contributions to the educational sector through initiatives like the Mickey Shapiro Opportunity Scholarship Endowment at Ferris State University. These efforts serve as a testament to his unwavering commitment to improving the lives of others.
He has been a staunch defender of free speech and the First Amendment. He believes vigilance in favor of free speech is central to the prospects for American freedom in our time and moving forward. To this end, it is a privilege to introduce you to the first three Mickey Shapiro Free Speech Fellows.
They are: Samuel Goldman, associate professor of political science and director of the Loeb Center at George Washington University. He was awarded a Shapiro Free Speech Fellow in late 2024, however his prize went into effect in May 2025. Second, Jennifer S. Bryson is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC). And finally, Luke C. Sheahan is Associate Professor of Political Science at Duquesne University. A short description of each Shapiro Free Speech Fellow follows.
Samuel Goldman – Mickey Shapiro Free Speech Fellow, 2024-2025
Samuel Goldman is an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, where he is also executive director of the John L. Loeb, Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom & Democracy.
His book, After Nationalism: Being American in a Divided Age, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2021. Goldman received his PhD from Harvard, and taught at Harvard and Princeton prior to joining GWU. In addition to academic work, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.
For his Shapiro Fellowship, Dr. Goldman is working on a book entitled Mad Professors: Conservative Academics and the Struggle for the American Mind. The book focuses on the earliest thinkers in the post-war American conservative movement and their writing or debating on higher education, including luminaries such as Peter Viereck, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr., Willmoore Kendall, Leo Strauss, and Robert Nisbet. Mad Professors will be published by Basic Books in 2026.
Jennifer S. Bryson – Mickey Shapiro Free Speech Fellow, 2025
Jennifer S. Bryson is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC). She translates works by twentieth-century Catholic authors, such as Ida Friederike Görres, from German to English. She has a BA from Stanford and an MA and a PhD from Yale. She previously worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Witherspoon Institute.
For her Shapiro Fellowship, Dr. Bryson will conduct research on the uses of satire in the Catholic journal Hochland as a means of challenging restrictions on free speech under the Nazi regime, as well as translate several related satirical works from Hochland from 1933 to 1941.
Luke Sheahan – Mickey Shapiro Free Speech Fellow, 2025
Luke C. Sheahan is Associate Professor of Political Science at Duquesne University (2019-present) and a Senior Affiliate in the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (PRRUCS) at the University of Pennsylvania. He is author of Why Associations Matter: The Case for First Amendment Pluralism (2020) and editor or coeditor of three books on freedom of speech and freedom of association.
For his Shapiro Fellowship, Dr. Sheahan will write an academic article that seeks to understand free speech in terms of plurality of authority, power, and principle. It argues that a defense of free speech draws upon many different principles, not just one, stitched together in a haphazard way, not only so democracy may work but so that government might be limited, that civil society institutions might thrive, and that culture might be built.
On November 19, 2025, the Russell Kirk Center will host the Richard D. McLellan Prizes Award Gala in Washington, D.C. at the National Press Club. The event, hosted by a distinguished prizes Jury, will honor Kristen Waggoner, our grand prize winner, and the 2025 Mickey Shapiro Free Speech Fellows. Get tickets and sponsorship information here.
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