The Irving Kristol Award is the highest honor conferred by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
The award is given for "notable intellectual or practical contributions to improved public policy and social welfare" and named in honor of Irving Kristol. It replaced the Francis Boyer Award in 2003. The award was named for Kristol as a tribute to his influence on public issues and as an intellectual mentor to several generations of conservatives. According to Christopher DeMuth, "In our sixty years of labors, no one has had a more profound influence on the work of the American Enterprise Institute, or on American political discourse, than Irving Kristol. Combining philosophical depth with intense practicality and constant good cheer, [Kristol] has, as President Bush has put it, 'transformed political debate on every subject he approached, from economics to religion, from social welfare to foreign policy.'" [1]
The Kristol Award is presented at AEI's Annual Dinner, a gala dinner in Washington, D.C., that is well-attended by conservative leaders and is a major event on the Washington social scene. [2] [3] President George W. Bush spoke at the first Kristol Award presentation in 2003. Bush's speech, only days before the commencement of the Iraq War, laid out his promise to launch military action even if the United Nations Security Council did not authorize it. [4] Former vice president Dick Cheney [5] and former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar [6] have also presented the award.
Kristol Award recipients occasionally make news with their speeches. John Howard, who had a few months before been defeated in the Australian elections, criticized his successor as prime minister, Kevin Rudd, over industrial relations and the Iraq War. [7] [8]
All recipients are given a token of esteem engraved with a citation for their achievements.
Year | Recipient | Nationality | Citation | Lecture title |
---|---|---|---|---|
2003 | Allan H. Meltzer | American | "To Allan H. Meltzer | "Leadership and Progress" |
2004 | Charles Krauthammer | American | "To Charles Krauthammer | "Democratic Realism Archived 2009-07-06 at the Wayback Machine " |
2005 | Mario Vargas Llosa | Peruvian | "To Mario Vargas Llosa | "Confessions of a Liberal Archived 2009-07-15 at the Wayback Machine " |
2006 | David Hackett Fischer | American | "To David Hackett Fischer | |
2007 | Bernard Lewis | British American | "To Bernard Lewis | "Europe and Islam Archived 2009-07-16 at the Wayback Machine " |
2008 | John Howard | Australian | "To John Winston Howard | "Keeping Faith with Our Common Values" |
2009 | Charles Murray | American | "To Charles Murray | "The Happiness of the People Archived 2009-07-06 at the Wayback Machine " |
2010 | David Petraeus | American | "The Surge of Ideas: COINdinistas and Change in the U.S. Army in 2006 Archived 2011-03-17 at the Wayback Machine " | |
2011 | Martin Feldstein | American | ||
2012 | Leon Kass | American | "The other war on poverty: Finding meaning in America" | |
2013 | Paul Ryan | American | "Conservatism and Community" | |
2014 | Eugene Fama | American | Eugene F. Fama presentation | |
2015 | Benjamin Netanyahu | Israeli | A conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu | |
2016 | Robert P. George | American | A conversation with Irving Kristol honoree Robby George | |
2017 | Jonathan Sacks | British | 2017 Annual Dinner speech | |
2018 | Boris Johnson | British | 2018 Annual Dinner speech | |
2019 | Nikki Haley | American | 2019 Annual Dinner speech | |
2020 | Nicholas Eberstadt | American | America after COVID-19: Which future? |
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a conservative center-right/right-wing think tank based in Washington, D.C., that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. AEI is an independent nonprofit organization supported primarily by contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals.
José María Alfredo Aznar López is a Spanish politician who was the prime minister of Spain from 1996 to 2004. He led the People's Party (PP), the dominant centre-right political party in Spain.
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., that focused on United States foreign policy. It was established as a non-profit educational organization in 1997, and founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. PNAC's stated goal was "to promote American global leadership". The organization stated that "American leadership is good both for America and for the world", and sought to build support for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity".
William Kristol is an American neoconservative writer. A frequent commentator on several networks including CNN, he was the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine The Weekly Standard. Kristol is now editor-at-large of the center-right publication The Bulwark and has been the host of Conversations with Bill Kristol, an interview web program, since 2014.
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Irving William Kristol was an American journalist and writer. As a founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectual and political culture of the latter half of the twentieth century. He was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism". After his death, he was described by The Daily Telegraph as being "perhaps the most consequential public intellectual of the latter half of the century". He is the father of political writer Bill Kristol.
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Allan H. Meltzer was an American economist and Allan H. Meltzer Professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and Institute for Politics and Strategy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Meltzer specialized on studying monetary policy and the US Federal Reserve System, and authored several academic papers and books on the development and applications of monetary policy, and about the history of central banking in the US. Together with Karl Brunner, he created the Shadow Open Market Committee: a monetarist council that deeply criticized the Federal Open Market Committee.
Christopher C. DeMuth is an American lawyer and a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute, as well as director of the National Conservatism conference organized by the Edmund Burke Society. He was the president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank, from 1986 to 2008. DeMuth is widely credited with reviving AEI's fortunes after its near-bankruptcy in 1986 and leading the institute to new levels of influence and growth. Before joining AEI, DeMuth worked on regulatory issues in the Ronald Reagan administration.
The Francis Boyer Award was the highest honor conferred by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. It was named for Francis Boyer, a chief executive at Smith, Kline & French in the mid-twentieth century and a strong supporter of AEI who died in 1972. The Boyer Award was replaced in 2003 by the Irving Kristol Award.
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