GORDON WOOD
2024 Recipient of THE GEORGE F. WILL AWARD
Professor Gordon Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. For his impressive scholarship he has won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Humanities Medal.
An important contributor to the conversation about the meaning of liberty, Professor Wood has been a longtime participant in all aspects of Liberty Fund’s programs. More importantly, he has expanded public interest in the ideas and ideals of liberty through the engagement inspired by his writing, scholarship and teaching.
Gordon Wood and George Will: In Conversation
Related Work
Essays by “The Free Republican,” 1784–1786
This is the first modern publication of ten essays published in the popular Boston newspaper The Independent Chronicle, a significant intellectual event in Massachusetts politics. The essays deal primarily with the problem of mixed government in a republic. Lincoln writes, “Two distinct and different orders of men seems incident to every society,” and these “two […]”
Gordon Wood's Reflections on the Constitution and Slavery
Many historians today tell a dismal tale of woe about our Founding, but Wood sees it whole with defects that do not blot out its real virtues.
2026 Honoree Niall Ferguson
Sir Niall Ferguson, FRSE, is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. He is the author of 16 books, including The Pity of War, The House of Rothschild, and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, which won the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Prize. He is an award-winning filmmaker, too, having received an international Emmy for his PBS series The Ascent of Money. He is a columnist with The Free Press and The Times of London.
2025 Honoree Richard A. Epstein
Richard A. Epstein is the inaugural Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, where he serves as a Director of the Classical Liberal Institute, which he help found in 2013. He has served as the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution since 2000. Epstein is also the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.
About the George F. Will Award
The George F. Will Award for the Advancement of Liberty and the Free Society was inspired by Liberty Fund’s founder, Pierre F. Goodrich, and his dedication to enriching our understanding and appreciation of the complex nature of a society of free and responsible individuals.
Named after George F. Will, America’s foremost columnist and a devoted friend of liberty, this award recognizes individuals who, like him, have made significant contributions to our understanding of the free society, individual liberty, and the human condition.