Past Free Expression Awards Honorees
The Free Expression Awards is an annual event that honors the achievements of First Amendment heroes for their courageous acts of and contributions to free expression.
2024
Honorees
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II
Founding president, Repairers of the Breach, and founding director, Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II has exercised and supported freedom of expression as a pastor, public theologian and civil rights leader, appealing to America’s “deepest moral values both constitutionally and religiously.”
Barber is founding president of Repairers of the Breach, which helps religious leaders and grassroots activists frame issues in moral terms. His leadership of Repairers led to the revival of the Poor People’s Campaign, where he serves as co-chair of the anti-poverty initiative established in 1967.
As North Carolina’s NAACP president, Barber organized the Forward Together movement that made national headlines beginning in 2013 with its “Moral Monday” rallies. Protesters kept up a four-year campaign at the state capitol challenging the state’s attacks on Medicaid expansion, aid to the poor, voting rights, living wages, public education and immigrants.
As founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School, Barber is preparing a new generation to forge “a just society both in the academy and in the streets.” He retired after 30 years as pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, in 2023.
He has written five books, including his latest, “White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy.”
Eric Church
Singer-songwriter
Eric Church has used his music and his platform to encourage free expression that builds dialogue rather than division on today’s toughest issues.
A country music superstar, Church has used his First Amendment freedoms to address complex topics in his music – from songs including “The Snake,” “Two Pink Lines,” “Stick That in Your Country Song” and more – while encouraging his diverse audience of fans to find common ground.
“Those things that unite us are music and sports. The times when, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican or whatever, you throw your arm around the person next to you,” he shared with Billboard. “We become one. We need that.”
“Always, no matter what genre you’re in, diversity usually leads to some breakthrough things. That’s what you want,” he remarked to Rolling Stone. Church was the Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year for 2020. “We as country music represent the United States of America in a lot of ways. We’re having a lot of the same conversations about the same stuff. The important thing is we continue to move the dialog, and we continue to have those conversations.”
Montana Youth Climate Advocates
Sixteen young people from Montana challenged their state on laws that favor the fossil fuel industry and are destroying their environment in violation of their fundamental constitutional rights. They are hikers and hunters, anglers and skiers, the children of farmers and ranchers. All share a passion to protect their right to a safe climate. They assembled at rallies, leveraged the media, and ultimately shared their stories in court. The world watched as they testified about how climate change has impacted their physical and mental health, their families, their food production, their ancestral and family traditions, their air, their land and their rivers. When they filed their case in 2020, they were ages 2 to 18. Last year, they won the first-ever constitutional climate change lawsuit tried in the United States. In Held v. Montana, a judge ruled that the “plaintiffs have proven that as children and youth, they are disproportionately harmed by fossil fuel pollution and climate impacts.” Lead plaintiff Rikki Held said, “As youth, we are exposed to a lot of knowledge about climate change. We can’t keep passing it on to the next generation when we’re being told about all the impacts that are already happening.”
The plaintiffs are Rikki H., Badge and Lander B., Sariel S., Kian T., Georgianna F., Kathryn G., Eva L., Mica K., Olivia V., Nathaniel and Jeffrey K., Claire V., Lilian and Ruby D., and Taleah H. They are represented by Our Children’s Trust, McGarvey Law and the Western Environmental Law Center.
Sesame Workshop
Accepted by Sherrie Westin, CEO
2024 Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media
For more than 50 years, Sesame Workshop has supported free expression through innovative educational programming that teaches children to express themselves, embrace differences and respect others. The global impact nonprofit has produced award-winning children’s educational television programming since 1969, reaching 150 million children in more than 150 countries. Its signature show, “Sesame Street,” has captivated the hearts, minds and imaginations of young children for more than 50 years with beloved characters like Big Bird, Elmo and Oscar the Grouch. “Sesame Street” prepares children for school, teaching about self-expression, problem-solving, kindness and respect for others. Sherrie Westin joined Sesame Workshop in 1998 and currently serves as CEO. Westin spearheaded a partnership between Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee that brings early learning and nurturing care to children whose lives are upended by conflict, reaching millions across the Middle East.
2023
Honorees
Alexey Navalny
Russian opposition leader
Accepted by Leonid Volkov, chief of staff for Alexey Navalny
Alexey Navalny has been poisoned, brutalized and banished to solitary confinement in prison for daring to defy Russian President Vladimir Putin. A politician who sought the Russian presidency in 2018, Navalny established an anti-corruption organization that chronicles the oligarchs who keep Putin in power. Using grassroots activism and social media to oppose Putin’s bloody regime, Navalny asks his country to imagine a different Russia. In 2020, he barely survived an assassination attempt by nerve-agent poisoning. Returning to Russia after recovering in Germany, he was arrested by authorities there. His story is told in the Oscar-winning documentary “Navalny.” His fearless activism continues from prison as he relays messages denouncing Russia’s relentless war with Ukraine. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Navalny’s message to his millions of supporters: “You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don't be inactive.”
Maria Hinojosa
Founder, Futuro Media Group
2023 Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media
Barrier-breaking Latina journalist Maria Hinojosa says the secret to her success is reporting with heart. Born in Mexico, she immigrated to the United States as a child, an experience that shaped her desire to tell the stories of people whose lives are often overlooked. On radio and television, she reported stories of impact for PBS, CBS, WNBC and CNN. The first Latina at NPR, she launched the weekly program “Latino USA.” Always working to create diverse newsrooms, she founded Futuro Media in 2010. Futuro won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for the podcast “Suave,” about a man imprisoned for life at 17 whom Hinojosa had interviewed over 27 years. Her accolades include four Emmys, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club and the Ruben Salazar Lifetime Achievement Award. As a mentor, Hinojosa’s advice to young journalists is simple: “Trust your gut about what's a story. But then also be prepared to bring some heart into it.”
Brooklyn Public Library
Troubled by book bans sweeping the country, staff at the Brooklyn Public Library, led by President and CEO Linda E. Johnson, acted to counter censorship and protect free expression with a tool both simple and profound: a library card.
In April 2022, the team launched Books Unbanned, which provides a free digital library card with access to more than 500,000 digital books to anyone in the U.S. from ages 13 to 21. The books include those being challenged for references to racism, gender identity and sexuality. So far, more than 6,000 young people in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have been issued cards. Members of the “Books Unbanned” team were named Library Journal’s 2023 Librarians of the Year. The library has also worked to provide access to books for immigrants, people who are homeless and families impacted by incarceration. Says Chief Librarian Nick Higgins, “A public library represents all of us in a pluralistic society. We exist with other people, with other ideas, other viewpoints and perspectives, and that’s what makes a healthy democracy.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Austin Tice, Washington Post contributor and freelance journalist
Representing all journalists who are jailed or unjustly held around the world Evan Gershkovich and Austin Tice ventured to dangerous places – Russia and Syria – to report stories the world needed to hear. They are now among the more than 300 journalists who are imprisoned or unjustly held around the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, was seized in March 2023 while on a reporting trip in Russia and arrested on charges of spying. The U.S. government and the Journal vehemently deny the accusations. Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison. Born to Russian parents who had fled persecution to the United States, Gershkovich leveraged his Russian language skills into an award-winning reporting career. He is the first American journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the Cold War.
In 2012, Tice was detained at a checkpoint near Damascus while reporting on the Syrian civil war. An award-winning freelance journalist and a veteran Captain in the United States Marine Corps, he was covering the story for The Washington Post, CBS and McClatchy. He was last seen in a video released five weeks after his kidnapping, surrounded by armed men. Tice is thought to be held captive in Syria. Efforts to win his release have failed so far.
2022
Honorees
Eric Treene
Former Special Counsel for Religious Discrimination, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Eric Treene served as special counsel for Religious Discrimination at the U.S. Department of Justice under four U.S. presidents. An evangelical Christian, Treene was guided by the First Amendment to protect religious liberty for all, particularly minority religions.
Treene led the Justice Department’s efforts to protect Muslim Americans and other groups from discrimination and bias in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. His office argued for the right of a Muslim congregation to build a heavily opposed mosque in Murfreesboro, Tenn., and focused on the rise of hate crimes motivated by religious bias.
Previously, Treene was litigation director at the nonprofit Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
“Nothing is more basic than being able to walk down the street without being attacked because of your faith or to go to your place of worship and feel safe,” he said in 2020.
Cynthia Choi, Russell Jeung and Manjusha P. Kulkarni
Founders of Stop AAPI Hate
San Francisco State University Professor Russell Jeung and advocacy group leaders Cynthia Choi of Chinese for Affirmative Action and Manjusha P. Kulkarni of the AAPI Equity Alliance founded Stop AAPI Hate in March 2020 to raise awareness about attacks on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic.
When California said it did not have the resources to track such incidents, the three created a website where people could report cases of harassment and violence. Within a week, 673 incidents in 31 states and the District of Columbia had been reported. After a series of brutal attacks on elderly Asian Americans and mass shootings in Atlanta and Indianapolis of Chinese, Korean and Sikh Americans, thousands more cases were reported.
In 2021, Stop AAPI Hate received funding from the state of California. The group’s goal is to counter anti-Asian bias and bullying by providing information, education and support to grassroots organizations and victims of hate incidents.
Alberto Ibargüen
President and CEO, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
2022 Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media
Alberto Ibargüen is a lawyer, publisher and longtime champion of journalism and the arts, embodying the principles of the First Amendment and the power of free expression.
As president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Ibargüen supports democracy in America through innovation in journalism and the arts. Knight’s recent decision to create a Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University illustrates his lasting commitment to diversity.
He is the former publisher of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, where his leadership inspired journalism that earned three Pulitzer Prizes and Spain’s Ortega y Gasset Award. He is also a former board member of multiple arts, education and journalism organizations.
Ibargüen’s visionary leadership has championed efforts to combat violence against journalists around the world, reimagined ways to adapt and support news for the digital age, and promoted the ideals of press freedom, free speech and open government. His work illuminates the Knight Foundation’s belief that informed and engaged communities are key to a healthy democracy.
Nikole Hannah-Jones
Knight Chair in Race and Journalism and Founder of the Center for Journalism and Democracy, Howard University, and staff writer, The New York Times Magazine
Nikole Hannah-Jones is a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer who has championed free speech, challenged academic censorship and worked to increase diversity in journalism.
Her 1619 Project explored the legacy of slavery in the United States, sparking a nationwide conversation. Amid backlash against the project, she challenged being denied tenure at her alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: “I fought this battle because I know that all across this country Black faculty, and faculty from other marginalized groups, are having their opportunities stifled.” She ultimately moved to Howard University.
Hannah-Jones has spent her career reporting on racial inequality and injustice, earning her the MacArthur Fellowship, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and three National Magazine Awards. She is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. In 2016, Hannah-Jones co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting to support reporters and editors of color.
2021
Honorees
Founding mothers of NPR - Susan Stamberg, Nina Totenberg, Linda Wertheimer and In Memory of Cokie Roberts
Lifetime Achievement Award
Susan Stamberg
Special correspondent, NPR
Susan Stamberg is the first woman to anchor a national nightly news program and has been inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame and the Radio Hall of Fame. An NPR “founding mother,” Stamberg has been on staff since the network began in 1971.
Beginning in 1972, Stamberg served as co-host of NPR’s award-winning newsmagazine “All Things Considered” for 14 years. She then hosted “Weekend Edition Sunday” and now reports on cultural issues for “Morning Edition” and “Weekend Edition Saturday” as a special correspondent.
Stamberg is known for her conversational style, intelligence and knack for finding an interesting story.
She has also been recognized with the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Ohio State University’s Golden Anniversary Director’s Award and the Distinguished Broadcaster Award from American Women in Radio and Television.
Nina Totenberg
Legal affairs correspondent, NPR</strong
Nina Totenberg is NPR’s award-winning legal affairs correspondent. Her reports air regularly on NPR’s critically acclaimed newsmagazines “All Things Considered,” “Morning Edition” and “Weekend Edition.”
She has reported on the U.S. Supreme Court for more than 40 years and notably broke the story about Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment by then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
Totenberg has won many major awards in broadcasting and holds the distinction of being the first radio journalist to have won the National Press Foundation’s “Broadcaster of the Year” award.
Linda Wertheimer
Senior national correspondent, NPR</strong
Linda Wertheimer is an NPR award-winning national correspondent. She travels the country and the globe for NPR News, bringing her unique insights to bear on the day’s top news stories.
Wertheimer is the first woman to anchor network coverage of a presidential nomination convention and of election night. She is also the first person to broadcast live from inside the U.S. Senate chamber.
She joined NPR at the network’s inception and served as the first director of “All Things Considered,” starting with its debut on May 3, 1971. In the nearly 50 years since, she has served NPR in a variety of roles including reporter and host.
Wertheimer has received numerous journalism awards, including awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the American Legion and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award.
Cokie Roberts
Cokie Roberts was a trailblazing reporter and commentator for ABC News and NPR at a time when women’s voices were rare on the politics beat. During more than 50 years in broadcasting, she won countless awards, including three Emmys. She was inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame and was cited by American Women in Radio and Television as one of the 50 greatest women in the history of broadcasting.
In addition to her reporting, Roberts wrote six New York Times bestsellers, most dealing with the roles of women in U.S. history. In 2008, the Library of Congress named her a “Living Legend,” one of the few Americans to have attained that honor.
Roberts died in 2019.
Deray Mckesson
Activist and Educator
DeRay Mckesson is an influential civil rights activist, educator, podcaster and author of the critically acclaimed book “On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope.” He is co-founder of Campaign Zero, which works to end police violence, and host of the award-winning weekly podcast “Pod Save The People.” In 2015, Mckesson was named one of Fortune magazine’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders and was awarded the Peter Jennings Award for Civic Leadership. In 2016, President Barack Obama praised Mckesson for his “outstanding work” as an activist in Baltimore, and he was named one of the “30 Most Influential People on the Internet” by Time magazine.
Julie K. Brown
Investigative Reporter, Miami Herald
Power Shift Award
Julie K. Brown is an investigative reporter with the Miami Herald. During her 30-year career, she has worked for several newspapers, focusing on crime, justice and human rights issues. As a member of the Herald’s prestigious investigative team, she has won dozens of awards. In 2018, she won a George Polk Award for “Perversion of Justice,” a series that examined how a rich and powerful sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, managed to arrange a secret plea deal and escape life in prison — even though he was suspected of sexually abusing more than 100 underage girls and young women. The series, and her subsequent dogged coverage of the case in 2019, led to the resignation of President Donald J. Trump’s labor secretary, Alex Acosta, Epstein’s arrest on new federal charges in New York, and reforms in the way prosecutors treat victims of sex crimes.
Brown previously won acclaim for a series of stories about abuses and corruption in Florida prisons. The stories led to the resignations of top agency officials, firings of corrupt corrections officers, and an overhaul in the treatment of inmates with mental and physical disabilities, as well as women in Florida prisons. That series also won a Polk Award. A native of Philadelphia, she is a graduate of Temple University.
Jimmy Lai
Former Chairman and Founder, Apple Daily and Next Digital
Jimmy Lai is the former chairman of Next Digital, the largest publicly traded media company in Hong Kong. His flagship publication, Apple Daily, is one of the most widely read newspapers in Hong Kong and Taiwan, in part because it is pro-democracy and critical of the Chinese government.
Lai fled Guangzhou, China, for Hong Kong at age 13, where he first worked in a garment factory for $8 a month. In 1975, Lai invested in Comitex, a bankrupt garment factory, which he built into Giordano, one of Asia's biggest retail companies. Lai sided vocally with pro-democracy activists in China during and after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and as a result, was forced by the Chinese government to divest from Giordano. In 1995, he founded the newspaper Apple Daily. Lai has been arrested multiple times for his advocacy of democracy in Hong Kong, freedom of the press and personal liberty.
Susan Wojcicki
CEO, YouTube
Susan Wojcicki is CEO of YouTube, the world’s most popular digital video platform. More than a billion people across the globe use YouTube to access information, share video and shape culture. Wojcicki was instrumental in Google’s 2006 acquisition of YouTube, and now oversees YouTube’s content and business operations, engineering and product development.
Before joining YouTube in February 2014, Wojcicki was senior vice president of Advertising and Commerce at Google, where she oversaw the design and engineering of AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick and Google Analytics. She joined Google in 1999 as the company’s first marketing manager and led the initial development of Google Images and Google Books. In 2002, Wojcicki began working on Google’s advertising products and over the next 12 years, she led teams that helped define the vision and direction of Google’s monetization platforms.
In 2015, Wojcicki was named to Time’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Colin L. Powell
Former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Global Freedom of Expression Leadership Award
For more than 50 years, Gen. Colin L. Powell, U.S. Army, devoted his life to public service. With senior military and diplomatic positions across four presidential administrations, his commitment to democratic values and freedoms has been felt throughout the world.
Powell served as President Ronald Reagan’s national security advisor, as well as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for both Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. During his time as chairman, he oversaw 28 crises, including the Panama intervention of 1989 and Operation Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf War.
Under President George W. Bush, Powell served as secretary of state, working to address regional and civil conflicts and advance economic and social development worldwide.
Powell has received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Army Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Soldier’s Medal, Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart. His civil awards include the Presidential Medal of Freedom (two), the President’s Citizens Medal, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Secretary of Energy Distinguished Service Medal. He also received awards from more than two dozen countries, including a French Legion of Honor and an honorary knighthood bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II.
Powell died in 2021.
2019
Honorees
Judy Woodruff
Anchor and managing editor, PBS NewsHour
Lifetime Achievement Award
Just out of college in 1968, Judy Woodruff interviewed for a job at an Atlanta TV station. The boss said she was hired. “Besides,” he told her, “how could I not hire somebody with legs like yours?” Sexism and mistreatment were common for women journalists then and now. Woodruff was undaunted. Eight years later, she was covering Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign for NBC News. Today, women make up more than half of the newsroom at PBS NewsHour, where Woodruff was the anchor and managing editor. In 2013, Judy and Gwen Ifill were named co-anchors of PBS NewsHour, the first all-female anchor team in television history. Woodruff doesn’t just fight for a place at the table for herself; she brings many more people along to the party. In 1990, she co-founded the International Women’s Media Foundation, helping women worldwide to get a start in journalism and communications. During her groundbreaking 40-years of journalism at NBC, CNN, Bloomberg News and PBS, Woodruff has covered 12 presidential elections, interviewed seven presidents and received more than 25 honorary degrees and numerous awards. She is a longtime friend of the Newseum and the Freedom Forum. She is a trustee of the Duke Endowment and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. She has raised millions of dollars advocating for families of children with disabilities. In a world of clickbait and fast takes on current events, Judy Woodruff is the standard for intelligent, thoughtful journalism with impact.
Tarana Burke
Founder, #MeToo movement
When news broke in October 2017 that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of decades of sexually abusing women, actress Alyssa Milano urged her followers on Twitter, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” Around the world, tens of millions of women and men shared their stories of abuse and anguish on social media using the hashtag “MeToo.” It was a phrase that activist Tarana Burke had created a decade earlier as part of her movement to help Black women and girls who were victims of sexual violence in communities where there were no rape crisis centers nearby. Burke’s movement was inspired by a 13-year-old girl she met as a camp counselor years earlier, who approached Tarana privately, and detailed horrific sexual abuse she endured from her mother’s boyfriend. Burke recalled that she could not bring herself to tell the girl that she too, was a victim of sexual violence. Burke is harnessing the worldwide attention #MeToo received to create a global community to help survivors of sexual violence heal. In 2017, Burke was among the people dubbed “The Silence Breakers” who were named Time magazine’s Person of the Year and in 2018, Burke was named one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People.”
Ava DuVernay
Filmmaker
Ava DuVernay is a filmmaker who turns barriers into bridges. An African American female director in an industry dominated by white men, she became the first Black woman to win the Sundance Film Festival directing award for her feature film, “Middle of Nowhere,” about women whose husbands are incarcerated. She went on to make more movies with meaning. “Selma” detailed the historic civil rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to secure voting rights for African Americans. It became the first film directed by a Black woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for best picture. DuVernay continued leaping over Hollywood’s hurdles for women and filmmakers of color. Her film version of the beloved children’s book “A Wrinkle in Time” topped $100 million at the box office, another first for an African American female director. Her Oscar-nominated documentary “13th” probed the links between America’s heritage of slavery and the mass incarceration of African American men. In 2019, DuVernay’s “When They See Us” explored the story of the Central Park Five, five men of color who spent years in prison for a notorious crime they did not commit. DuVernay’s passion for justice and representation continues behind the scenes, where she hires only women to direct her TV series, “Queen Sugar.” In 2017, she co-founded the Evolve Entertainment Fund, promoting diversity in Hollywood by providing 150 internships in 2018.
Elizabeth Palmer, Debora Patta and Holly Williams
International correspondents, CBS News
Elizabeth Palmer, Debora Patta and Holly Williams are part of CBS News’s team of correspondents who travel the globe to report some of the most compelling stories of our time, often at great personal risk. For more than 20 years, Elizabeth Palmer has covered conflict, from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She was one of the first U.S. journalists to report from Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and is one of the few who have visited Iran’s nuclear plants. Her reporting on the civil war in Syria earned the prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. After a dozen trips there, the Syrian government banned her from returning when she reported civilians were being attacked in the siege of Aleppo.
Based in Johannesburg, Debora Patta has covered the end of apartheid in South Africa and the election and death of President Nelson Mandela. She interviewed a Boko Haram terrorist about the kidnapping of hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls and wore a hazmat suit to report on the rise of the deadly Ebola virus in Liberia. Her story about child cobalt miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo spurred CBS News viewers to donate money to send the children to school. After starting her career at BBC Radio in South Africa, she went on to help launch the country’s first 24-hour TV news channel.
Holly Williams was among the first network correspondents to report on the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq. She convinced an accused al-Qaida terrorist to detail the torture he endured during interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and reported on the Syrian civil war’s humanitarian crisis from refugee camps in Turkey. In Saudi Arabia, Williams interviewed the women who risk jail for demanding the right to drive. She won the George Polk Award for reporting on a Chinese dissident’s escape in Beijing. For these women, being foreign correspondents and parents away from home has its challenges, but it’s also a point of pride. When Palmer was reporting from Afghanistan, her son told her, “Mom, a lot of the guys at school have fathers in Afghanistan, but I’m the only one with a mom there.”
Bobby Berk, Karamo Brown, Tan France, Antoni Porowski and Jonathan Van Ness
Cast, “Queer Eye”
You know them better as the Fab 5, the stars of Netflix’s hit reality TV series “Queer Eye,” who travel the world promoting self-improvement, acceptance and forgiveness. With humor and heart, they challenge stereotypes and assumptions while giving advice about food, fashion, home décor and hairstyles. But their makeovers go much deeper than a new haircut or a wardrobe change. In Gay, Ga., they helped Tammye Hicks, a cancer survivor and devout Christian, seek forgiveness from her son for failing to accept him when he told her he was gay. All that, and Tammye got a new haircut, a community center and a groundswell of social media support. The show continued to break new ground with an episode featuring a transgender man coming to terms with his new life after gender confirmation surgery. The Fab 5 have traveled from Georgia to Japan spreading their brand of acceptance, love, diversity and inclusion. They are social media superstars who use the powers of free expression to change the world, one makeover at a time.
2018
Honorees
Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
Former publisher, The New York Times, and chairman, The New York Times Company
Lifetime Achievement Award
Arthur Sulzberger Jr. is the former publisher of The New York Times and has been chairman of The New York Times Company since 1997. During the past decade, he has shaped and implemented innovative print and online initiatives that are enabling the Times to compete successfully in the 21st century global media marketplace. During Sulzberger’s tenure as publisher, the Times earned 60 Pulitzer Prizes and provided its readers with innumerable examples of momentous journalism. Before coming to the Times in 1978 as a correspondent in its Washington bureau, Sulzberger was a reporter with the Raleigh (N.C.) Times and a London correspondent for The Associated Press. Mr. Sulzberger was on the board of both the North Carolina Outward Bound School and the New York Outward Bound Schools, serving as chairman of the latter. He also helped found and was chairman of the Times Square Alliance. He is a current member of the board of the Mohonk Preserve. Sulzberger earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Tufts University in 1974. He is also a 1985 graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Program for Management Development.
Drs. Tommie Smith and John Carlos
Olympic medalists
Dr. Tommie C. Smith broke the world record for the 200-meter race at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, but he made history for the brave stand he took on the gold medal platform that night. As “The Star-Spangled Banner” played, Smith and teammate John Carlos bowed their heads and raised their gloved fists in a defiant protest for human rights that echoed around the world. Smith had won the gold medal, but his protest against the unjust treatment of black Americans and people of color around the world took a heavy toll. The men were booed and banished from the Olympics. Smith returned home to death threats and struggled to find work to support his young family. After a season with the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals, Smith turned to a career as an educator, coach and activist. The only man to have held 11 world records in track at one time, Smith is in the National Track and Field Hall of Fame and the California Black Sports Hall of Fame. Smith and Carlos won the Arthur Ashe Courage Award in 2008, and their watershed moment in civil rights history is captured in a statue at San Jose State University, where their activism took root.
Dr. John Carlos won a bronze medal in the 200-meter race at the 1968 Olympics, and his defiant protest for human rights on the medal stand propelled him to an enduring legacy as a civil rights activist. Carlos and teammate Tommie Smith lowered their heads and raised their gloved fists in a silent protest of the mistreatment of black Americans and people of color everywhere at the Mexico City Games. It was a watershed moment in civil rights history, but the glare of worldwide attention was harsh. Banished from the Olympics and facing death threats at home, Carlos struggled to find work. He had a brief professional football career in the U.S. and Canada. He worked for the U.S. Olympic Committee and in 1985 became a counsellor and coach at Palm Springs High School in California. He was inducted into the Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2008, he was a torchbearer for the Human Rights Torch to draw attention to China’s human rights abuses ahead of the Beijing Olympics. That same year, he and Tommie Smith won the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. In 2011, he stood with the Occupy Wall Street movement. As an athlete, educator and activist, Carlos has worked to achieve respect and opportunity for all people.
Riss
Charlie Hebdo cartoonist
Two masked terrorists shot their way into a staff meeting at the French newspaper office of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, killing 12 people. Cartoonist Laurent Sourisseau — best known by his pen name Riss — survived the attack by pretending to be dead. Eight of the dead were Riss’s colleagues at the newspaper, including his co-editor Stéphane Charbonnier, known as Charb. Riss was shot in the shoulder, but from his hospital bed he produced four cartoons for the “survivors’ edition” of the newspaper published a week after the deadly attack. The terrorists targeted Hebdo, which was known for its searing satire on religion and politics, because it had published cartoons caricaturing the prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam. In the three years since the attack, Riss and his colleagues have endured physical and emotional trauma, their lives forever changed. Under constant threat, they have 24-hour police protection. A circulation boost in the aftermath of the murders has tapered off, and Hebdo struggles under financial pressures. Yet three years after millions marched under the banner “Je Suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”), Riss’s staff continues to puncture the powerful and the pompous in fierce defense of the fundamental right to free expression.
Journalists who uncovered sexual misconduct in the workplace
The Indianapolis Star
- Mark Alesia, investigative and enterprise reporter
- Steve Berta, investigations editor
- Tim Evans, investigative reporter
- Marisa Kwiatkowski, investigative reporter
The New Yorker
- Ronan Farrow, contributing writer
The New York Times
- Michael Schmidt, reporter
- Emily Steel, business reporter
The Washington Post
- Amy Brittain, investigative reporter
- Irin Carmon, Outlook contributing writer
- Alice Crites, research editor
- Paul Farhi, media reporter
- Stephanie McCrummen, national enterprise reporter
- Beth Reinhard, investigative reporter
Because of the power of the press, shocking revelations about the scale and seriousness of unchecked sexual misconduct in our society have resulted in a huge cultural shift. “What finally started this reckoning and ended this decades-long cycle of abuse was investigative reporting,” said the prosecutor in the case of a doctor accused of sexually abusing young gymnasts for years, a story tenaciously reported by the Indianapolis Star.
Reporters who broke major stories about sexual harassment and misconduct were stonewalled, threatened and bullied — much like the women whose stories they told. Their work broke through a dam of suppressed stories and silenced voices to reveal decades-long harassment throughout the American workplace, including media, film, sports, manufacturing, the arts and Congress. They reported stories that were open secrets but had been shut down in the past by powerful enablers. Tracking down sources around the globe, they gave voice to people who went public with horror stories of sexual misconduct that ranged from verbal harassment to rape. The reporting spurred resignations and firings of powerful men who had seemed invincible. It also unleashed the #MeToo social media movement that inspired hundreds of thousands of people to reveal their own stories of abuse. Backed by the courage of those who spoke out, the journalists’ work inspired a movement for transformative change.
2017
Honorees
John Lewis
United States Representative, Georgia
Lifetime Achievement Award
John Lewis was the living embodiment of the power and promise of the First Amendment. Born in the segregated South to Alabama sharecroppers, Lewis was inspired by a preacher he heard on the radio to pursue a life of social justice. That preacher was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. At age 19, Lewis helped lead sit-ins at whites-only lunch counters in Nashville, Tenn. In one incident, Lewis and other protesters were locked in a room and sprayed with insecticide. A year later, Lewis risked his life to integrate interstate bus travel during the Freedom Rides. Beaten bloody by mobs in South Carolina and Alabama, Lewis persisted. Two years later, he was one of the organizers of and a keynote speaker at the March on Washington. While leading a peaceful march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, Lewis’s skull was fractured by state police wielding billy clubs. Lewis led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at the height of its influence fighting racial injustice from 1963 to 1966, leading protests against discrimination in housing, education, employment and at the ballot box. He was arrested more than 40 times. Lewis went on to become director of the Voter Education Project, which added nearly 4 million minority citizens to the voter rolls. In 1986, he was elected to Congress and has served as the U.S. representative of Georgia’s 5th Congressional District ever since. In 2011, Lewis was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. In 2016, Lewis led a sit-in on the House floor to demand action on gun control. His best-selling graphic novel series, “March,” brought the civil rights struggle to life for a new generation of Americans.
Lewis died in 2020.
Tim Cook
CEO, Apple
Free Speech Award
Tim Cook was four years into his job as CEO of Apple, one of the largest and most influential technology companies in the world, when he was thrust into a First Amendment battle with the U.S. government. On Dec. 2, 2015, terrorists shot and killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., and injured 22 others. The killers died in a shootout with police, but they left behind an iPhone that the FBI believed held clues to their motivations and possible accomplices. The FBI asked Apple to unlock the phone, but Cook refused, arguing it would set a dangerous precedent. By unlocking that phone, Apple’s engineers would be forced to write code that Cook called “the software equivalent of cancer,” threatening the privacy and safety of iPhone users around the globe. While Cook battled the government’s demand to unlock the phone, the FBI found a workaround. But Cook’s courageous stand to protect the civil liberties of his customers had prevailed. Tim Cook has long used his prominent position to fight for what he believes in, often in the defense of marginalized Americans. In 2014, he was named to Alabama’s Academy of Honor alongside then-Sen. Jeff Sessions and University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban. As the sole speaker representing the 2014 inductees, Cook took the opportunity to criticize his home state over its poor record on racial equality, education and acceptance of gay, lesbian and transgender citizens. Days later, the intensely private Cook wrote an essay for Bloomberg Businessweek addressing his sexual orientation. Cook wrote, “I’m proud to be gay,” and added that being in this minority has given him a window into the experiences of other minority groups. As the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company, he continues to advocate for human rights, immigration reform and equal pay. Cook once said, “You want to be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripple for change.”
Martha Raddatz
Chief Global Affairs Correspondent, ABC News, and Co-anchor, “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”
Free Press Award
ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz has reported from the front lines of some of the most important stories of the past 20 years. In battlefields from Bosnia to Iraq to Afghanistan, her stories revealed the toll of war on the military and civilians. Raddatz embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq and was the only television reporter allowed to cover a combat mission over Afghanistan in an F-15 fighter jet. Her best-selling book “The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family” details remarkable tales of heroism, hope and heartbreak during the Iraq War. Raddatz covered the fight against ISIS from U.S. aircraft carriers and on the ground in Iraq. In 2015, she was granted exclusive access to the anti-ISIS command center, reporting from an undisclosed location in the Middle East. At home, Raddatz has held the nation’s leaders accountable with her tough reporting from the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department. She asks tough and direct questions to presidents and politicians and moderated one of the 2016 debates between presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Her courageous reporting has been recognized with multiple awards, including five Emmys and a Peabody Award. Throughout her career, Raddatz has demonstrated her fierce and fearless commitment to a free press.
Kristina Arriaga de Bucholz
Executive Director, Becket Law
Religious Freedom Award
Kristina Arriaga de Bucholz is the daughter of Cuban refugees who left everything behind to flee the repressive regime of Fidel Castro in 1961. She has never forgotten the lesson her parents taught her: “If we have freedom, we have everything.” Arriaga has made it her life’s work to defend America’s first freedom – religious freedom – as executive director of Becket Law. Becket Law is a nonprofit law firm that has been nicknamed “God’s ACLU” for its work for all faiths, from Anglicans to Zoroastrians. Arriaga is also a fierce and fearless defender of refugees and political prisoners. In 1991, as director of the Valladares Foundation human rights group, she helped a Cuban defector secure an airplane for a do-or-die rescue of the wife and two children he left behind. The rescue succeeded, and Arriaga’s success in the courtroom has been just as soaring. She fought for the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of nuns, and the craft store chain Hobby Lobby to be exempt from the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers provide their employees access to birth control. She won a case that allowed a Muslim inmate in an Arkansas prison to grow a beard as an expression of his faith. She got the federal government to give back ceremonial feathers that had been seized from a Native American pastor by the Department of the Interior. Arriaga has also worked for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and in 2016, she was named to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Hugh Hefner and Christie Hefner
Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Playboy and Former Chairman and CEO, Playboy Enterprises
Arts And Entertainment Award
Hugh M. Hefner championed individual freedom and the First Amendment for more than 60 years. Fighting back against the 1950s’ strait-laced attitudes about sex, Hefner launched Playboy magazine in 1953 with $8,000 he borrowed from friends, and a little help from Marilyn Monroe. Playboy quickly became one of the most influential magazines of the 20th century, ushering in the sexual revolution while celebrating great writers, artists and journalism. When writers were being blacklisted as communists in the 1950s and ’60s, Hefner published their work in Playboy. When segregation ruled the American South, Hefner’s Playboy Clubs welcomed Black guests as well as entertainers. When few TV shows depicted integrated musical acts, Hefner featured them on his late-night TV variety show “Playboy After Dark.” At its peak popularity, Playboy boasted 7 million subscribers. In 1979, Hefner’s daughter Christie joined Playboy to establish the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards, celebrating people who promote and defend the freedoms Americans cherish most. and expanding its profitable brand worldwide. She also used her considerable clout to promote causes close to her heart: pay equity, the Equal Rights Amendment, gay rights and abortion rights. She established a Freedom of Expression award at the Sundance Film Festival, highlighting documentaries that address social problems. Throughout their careers, both Hefners have been challenged for their views on free expression and the First Amendment. Said Hugh Hefner, “I want to live in a society in which people can voice unpopular opinions because I know that as a result of that, a society grows and matures.”
Hugh Hefner died in 2017.
2016
Honorees
Pussy Riot
Feminist punk rock protest group from Russia
Arts and Entertainment Award
Feminist punk rock protest group Pussy Riot introduced the world to a new kind of activism with its provocative performances and music videos. In 2012, the Russian group rose to international prominence when three of its members were arrested after staging a protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin at a Moscow cathedral. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina were convicted of hooliganism and spent nearly two years in prison. The third member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was released on a suspended sentence two months after her arrest. Since then, Pussy Riot has continued to use music and activism to fight for freedom of expression, LGBTQ rights and prison reform. The 2016 award was accepted by Tolokonnikova.
James Risen
New York Times reporter
Free Press Award
New York Times reporter James Risen uncovered a failed CIA plot to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program in his 2006 book “State of War.” The publication of the book launched a seven-year legal battle by the U.S. government to get him to reveal his source or go to jail. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Risen lost his case in the Supreme Court, but his fierce advocacy of press freedom prompted a change in government policy on forcing journalists to testify.
Boniface Mwangi
Activist and photojournalist
Free Speech Award
Kenyan activist and photojournalist Boniface Mwangi has been arrested, beaten and blackmailed for his reporting and his efforts to promote free expression. When violence erupted in the aftermath of Kenya’s 2007 presidential election, Mwangi risked his life to document the bloodshed that killed more than 1,000 people. Outraged, he organized a street exhibit of his photos that toured the country. In 2011, Mwangi launched Pawa254, a creative collective that brings journalists, filmmakers and activists together to promote free expression and fight for social change.
Abdallah bin Bayyah
President, Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies
Religious Freedom Award
A lifelong advocate for peace, Abdallah bin Bayyah is president of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies and one of the world’s most respected Islamic scholars. He is a leading voice for religious freedom in the Sunni Muslim world. Bin Bayyah employs dialogue and education to combat ideologies that fuel extremism. Using social media and other means, his organization combats terrorists’ recruitment efforts with Islam’s messages of peace and tolerance. Bin Bayyah is co-moderator of Religions for Peace, an interfaith coalition dedicated to advancing common action among the world’s religious communities for peace.