Hillsdale professor receives prestigious Bradley Prize

Home News Hillsdale professor receives prestigious Bradley Prize
Hillsdale professor receives prestigious Bradley Prize
Mollie Hemingway and her husband, Mark, taught a two-week seminar at Hillsdale College during the spring 2016 semester as the Dow Journalism Pullian Fellows. | Collegian Archives

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation recently awarded the prestigious 2021 Bradley Prize to one of Hillsdale College’s own. 

Mollie Hemingway, senior journalism fellow at Hillsdale’s Kirby Center in Washington, D.C., is among the three winners of the Milwaukee-based foundation’s annual prize. The group recognizes people who “make significant contributions to the freedom movement,” according to Richard Graber, president and CEO of the foundation. 

Hemingway, who is also senior editor of the conservative online magazine The Federalist, will be presented with the award at a Sept. 13 ceremony at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. She will also receive a $250,000 cash prize. 

“Mollie is having an incredible impact,” Graber said. “She’s a woman of courage.”

Hemingway is also a Fox News contributor, regularly appearing on “Special Report with Bret Baier.” She is co-author, with Carrie Severino, of “Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court,” which was published in 2019. 

She joined the Hillsdale faculty in 2019 and teaches courses on investigative reporting to undergraduate students in the Washington-Hillsdale Internship Program. In the spring of 2016, she and her husband Mark Hemingway, now a senior writer for RealClearInvestigations, were the Eugene C. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Fellows in Journalism at Hillsdale. They taught a one-credit course through the Dow Journalism Program and Mark gave a public lecture about free speech.

“I’m thrilled and honored to be selected by the Bradley Foundation and to be in such august company,” Hemingway said in The Federalist’s coverage of the award. “Because it can be very difficult to stand up against an entire media establishment committed to peddling false narratives, the courage of the Bradley Foundation is commendable.”

This year’s other two winners are Amity Shlaes, author and chair of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation board, and Roger Ream, president of conservative non-profit organization, The Fund for American Studies.

Past winners of the prize include three people with connections to Hillsdale: President Larry Arnn (2015), visiting professor and historian Victor Davis Hanson (2008), and Hillsdale College Distinguished Fellow and British historian Sir Martin Gilbert (2009).

The prize was first awarded in 2004. The foundation did not give out the award in 2020 due to the pandemic. 

“The prize honors excellence in the pursuit of freedom,” Graber said, “for people that have dedicated careers and lives to furthering that cause.”

Graber added that the selection process is “very rigorous.”

A nominating committee made up of conservatives across the country sends names to the foundation. Nominated individuals undergo a vetting process and are sent to a selection committee that sends top candidates to the foundation’s board of directors. 

Hemingway’s bravery in reporting put her among the top names on the list, Graber said.  

“Her career, in a very short period of time, has demonstrated courage,” Graber said.

​​“This is a phenomenal and much-deserved award for Mollie Hemingway, who has become a must-read journalist and political analyst,” said Ben Domenech, publisher of the Federalist, in the outlet’s coverage of the prize. “Her insight, perception, and depth of knowledge have proven unmatched in recent years. She has developed a unique ability to identify false narratives, anticipate where they are headed, and deploy a dogged work ethic to chase down the truth.”

Hemingway’s next book, “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections” is slated for release on Oct. 12.

The Bradley Foundation distributes between $35 and $45 million each year to charities in Wisconsin and across the country that “strengthen civil society and uphold our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” according to the foundation’s website.