The Richard D. McLellan Prizes for Advancing Free Speech and Expression

2025 McLellan Prize Winner Information

Honoring Kristen Waggoner, McLellan Grand Prize Winner

Kristen Waggoner Biography

For more than a decade, Kristen Waggoner has created and implemented innovative strategies that secure the Golden Rule of Free Speech: Treat speech you oppose with the same protections as the speech you support.

Under her leadership, ADF achieved one of the most significant free speech victories in a generation: the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023), which Waggoner briefed and argued. This ruling protects Americans from being compelled by government officials to express messages contrary to their beliefs. Beyond winning 303 Creative, Waggoner has led ADF’s litigation in five other recent Supreme Court wins for free speech—including arguing Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski—and in 400 victories protecting the speech of college students from all walks of life. Under Waggoner’s leadership, ADF also helped 22 states pass laws protecting students from unconstitutional speech codes and similar policies. Internationally, ADF is engaged in hundreds of precedent-setting legal cases across six continents, defending fundamental freedoms and the right of every person to speak freely across the globe.

Beyond government threats, Waggoner has also recognized the growing challenge of private censorship in digital and financial platforms. Under her guidance, ADF launched a new Center for Free Speech in 2023 to respond to this evolving frontier, with early successes such as Tennessee’s adoption of ADF’s model bill to protect consumers from politically motivated account closures.

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Registration is now open for the 2025 Richard D. McLellan Prizes for Advancing Free Speech & Expression Awards Gala Honoring Kristen Waggoner

Join the Russell Kirk Center at the National Press Club on November 19, 2025 for our second McLellan Prizes gala where we’ll honor this year’s winners. Individual, couple, and student tickets are available now.

When:
Nov. 19, 2025, 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM

Reserve Your Tickets Below

Freedom of expression and the guarantees of the First Amendment are among our most cherished, and hard won, liberties. Their benefits can be hard to see, though they are fundamental to who we are as Americans.

Declining levels of civic literacy threaten to sever a younger generation from their country’s rich inheritance of order, justice, and freedom. The rise of disinformation through social media and curbs on free speech and expression on campuses, workplaces, public spaces, and corporate boardrooms, make advancing this most fundamental freedom an urgent task.

The Richard D. McLellan Prizes is a unique educational program administered by the Russell Kirk Center. Its aim is to help reshape the national conversation on issues surrounding the durability and prospects for the American tradition of free speech and expression as guaranteed in the U. S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

The McLellan Prizes draw attention to the central importance of the free speech tradition, particularly recognizing those doing the most important and exciting work in that area. These Prizes seek to support talented thinkers, creators, and communicators capable of rearticulating the perennial importance of the First Amendment, and transmitting a better understanding of the freedoms it secures for all.

The McLellan Prizes Will Encourage the Best in Creative Works to Champion Free Expression

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. In addition, two outstanding writers will be awarded $12,500 summer research grants to pursue projects that enhance our understanding and advocacy of Free Speech. Together they will support those making an exceptional case for the ongoing necessity of the American tradition of free speech.

We believe that these awards will take their place among the most sought-after prizes and will provide a needed incentive for writers and related thinkers to advocate afresh for the central importance of the First Amendment’s defense of the freedom of speech.

For inquiries about the McLellan Prizes or about nominated work, please contact mclellanprizes at kirkcenter.org.

2024 McLellan Prize Winner Information

Greg Lukianoff, Grand Prize Winner

Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, New York Times best-selling author, and the President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). He is the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, Freedom From Speech, and FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus.

He co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure with Jonathan Haidt. Most recently Greg co-authored The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Solution with
Rikki Schlott. Greg is also an Executive Producer of Can We Take a Joke? (2015), a feature-length documentary that explores the collision between comedy, censorship, and outrage culture, both on and off campus, and of Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story (2020), an award-winning feature-length film about the life and career of former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser.

Greg has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and numerous other publications. He frequently appears on TV shows and radio programs, including the CBS Evening News, The Today Show, and NPR’s Morning Edition. In 2008, he became the first-ever recipient of the Playboy Foundation’s Freedom of Expression Award, and he has testified before both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives about free speech issues on America’s college campuses.

Samuel Goldman, Academic Prize Winner

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 most recent book, After Nationalism: Being American in a Divided Age was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in spring 2021. Goldman received his Ph.D. from Harvard, and taught at Harvard and Princeton before coming to GW. In addition to academic work, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.

Josiah Joner, Academic Prize Winner

Josiah Joner studied economics at Stanford University, where he served as the 68th
Editor-in-Chief of The Stanford Review. At Stanford, Josiah covered various issues of
free speech on campus and documented many of the university’s censorship efforts
during the Covid pandemic. He has testified before Congress on protecting free
speech in higher education and has appeared on major television and radio networks.
Josiah lives in the Bay Area and is working on a project about free speech and
censorship at Stanford and beyond.