BREINDEL AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM GIVEN
TO MAX BOOT, SENIOR FELLOW AT THE
COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
***

2nd Annual College and University Award Given to Claremont University Student John Wilson

June 5, 2007 (New York, NY) – The Eric Breindel Foundation presented the ninth annual Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism to Max Boot, senior fellow in National Security Studies at the Council of Foreign Relations, at a reception held at the New York Historical Society this evening. The Foundation also honored John Wilson, a student at Claremont McKenna College, with the second annual College and University Award for Excellence in Journalism.

The Foundation presented a $20,000 award to the professional journalist, columnist or editorialist and a $10,000 award to a college or university student whose work best reflects the spirit that animated the writings of Eric Breindel: Love of country and its democratic institutions, as well as the act of bearing witness to the evils of totalitarianism.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave remarks at the reception, which was hosted by Rupert Murdoch, Chairman & CEO, News Corporation, Lally Weymouth, Senior Editor of Newsweek, and Roger Ailes, Chairman of Fox News Channel and Fox Television Stations.

In addition to his work at the Council, Mr. Boot is a weekly foreign-affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times, a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard, and a regular contributor to the New York Times, The Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs, among others. In 2004, he was named one of “the 500 most influential people in the United States in the field of Foreign Policy” by the World Affairs Councils of America.

His latest book, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today (Gotham Books, 2006), has been hailed as a “magisterial survey of technology and war” by the New York Times, “brilliantly crafted history” by the Wall Street Journal, and “a book for both the general reader and reading generals” by the New York Post.

His previous book, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (Basic Books) was selected as one of the best books of 2002 by the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor. It won the 2003 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award, given annually by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for the best nonfiction book pertaining to Marine Corps history, and has been placed on Navy, Army, and Marine Corps professional reading lists.

Before joining the Council in 2002, Mr. Boot spent eight years as a writer and editor at the Wall Street Journal, the last five years as editorial features editor. From 1992 to 1994 he was an editor and writer at the Christian Science Monitor.

Mr. Boot holds a bachelor’s degree in history, with high honors, from the University of California, Berkeley (1991), and a master’s degree in history from Yale University (1992). He grew up in Los Angeles and now lives with his family in the New York area.

The pieces that earned Mr. Boot the Breindel Award include “Bush Didn’t Start the Mideast Fire” (Los Angeles Times), “The Power of the Pentagon” (Wall Street Journal), “Darfur Solutions: Send in the Mercenaries” (Los Angeles Times), “Staying the Wrong Course in Iraq” (Los Angeles Times) and “Second Lebanon War” (the Weekly Standard).

John Wilson, the winner of this year’s collegiate award, graduated this May with honors from Claremont McKenna University, receiving a B.A. in Government. Mr. Wilson is originally from the town of Hebron in eastern Connecticut.

As a sophomore he became editor-in-chief of the Claremont Independent, the college's well-established conservative monthly journal and wrote his senior thesis on the role of imperialism in the political thought of the young Winston Churchill.

His prize-winning piece, “Finding Burke Among the Street Sleepers” grew out of his experiences with homelessness while living and working at a church in Central London last summer, where he also assisted the church's refugee center and helped organize its summer outreach festival.

As the winner, Mr. Wilson chose an internship at the New York Post and plans to begin this June.

Past Breindel Award recipients include: Claudia Rosett, Journalist-in-Residence for The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; Daniel Henninger, Deputy Editorial Page Editor of the Wall Street Journal; Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe, Tom Flannery of the Carbondale News, Jay Nordlinger of the National Review and Victor Davis Hanson, best-selling author and freelance writer; Michael Kelly, Editor at Large of the Atlantic Monthly, was killed in Iraq while covering the war and received the award posthumously. Last year’s winner was Mark Steyn, Internationally Syndicated Columnist.

Matt Mireles, a junior at Columbia University was the 2006 collegiate winner.

In 1977, Eric Breindel graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, where he was editorial chairman of the Harvard Crimson and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After receiving his A.B. from Harvard, Eric studied politics at the London School of Economics. He went to Harvard Law School where he received his J.D. in 1982.

Eric became the Editorial Page Editor of the New York Post in 1986 and was appointed Senior Vice President of News Corporation in 1997. His nationally syndicated column appeared weekly in the Post and he was the moderator of a weekly national public affairs television program, Fox News Watch, on the Fox News Channel. A book of his columns, titled A Passion for Truth: The Selected Writings of Eric Breindel, was published in 1998.

The Breindel Foundation, a 501c-3 tax-exempt entity, remains open to those who wish to honor Eric’s memory with a donation. Those interested should write to: Eric Breindel Memorial Foundation, 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036. For information regarding next year’s submissions, please call Germaine Febles at (212) 843-8031.
# # #