Courage Prize
President Jimmy Carter, 2007 recipient of the Ridenhour Courage Prize, is the 39th President of the United States and winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. As First Citizen, Jimmy Carter has consistently defended the public interest and acted on his passion for social justice.
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Gloria Steinem, 2006 recipient
of the Ridenhour Courage Prize, is the co-founder of Ms.
Magazine and one of the most important voices and thinkers
of the women’s movement. Her courage, spirit and activism
have helped drive and define feminism.
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Seymour Hersh, 2005 recipient
of the Ridenhour Courage Prize, exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal
in a series of articles for The New Yorker.
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Daniel Ellsberg, recipient of the inaugural Ridenhour Courage Prize, leaked a 7,000-page document known as the Pentagon Papers, which revealed that victory in Vietnam was far from certain, despite government assurances to the contrary.
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Book Prize
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, 2007 recipient of the Ridenhour Book Prize, is the author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, an exemplary work of reportage that takes us behind the barricaded walls of Baghdad's Green Zone.
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Anthony Shadid, 2006 recipient
of the Ridenhour Book Prize, is the author of Night
Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s
War, a moving account of everyday Iraqis caught in the crossfire
of international conflict.
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Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, 2005
recipient of the Ridenhour Book Prize, chronicles a decade in the
life of one family in her novel Random
Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx,
a haunting account of the day-to-day realities of urban poverty.
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Deborah Scroggins, recipient of the inaugural Ridenhour Book Prize, is the author of Emma’s War: An Aid Worker, Radical Islam, and the Politics of Oil – A True Story of Love and Death in the Sudan. It is both the riveting story of a British aid worker and the local warlord she marries, and a revealing look at Sudan: a world where international aid fuels armies instead of the starving, and where the government is locked in battle with other groups over oil.
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Truth-Telling Prize
Donald Vance, 2007 recipient of the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, was an American contractor in Iraq who was detained by American troops and held at the notorious Camp Cropper for over three months before being released without explanation. He was recognized for coming forward to tell his story and call for accountability.
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Rick Piltz, 2006 recipient of
the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, is a science policy expert who
served for a decade in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Office.
There he witnessed Bush administration efforts to manipulate and
censor the communication of scientific findings on global climate
change. He was recognized for revealing this to the press and public.
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Kristen Breitweiser, 2005 recipient
of the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, is a 9/11 widow and activist.
She was honored for her role in pressuring official Washington to
provide a public accounting of what went wrong on September 11th.
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Joseph Wilson, recipient of the inaugural Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, was an ambassador to two African nations and the senior American diplomat in Baghdad during the first Gulf War. He was recognized for challenging the assertion in President George Bush’s State of the Union address that Iraq had sought to purchase significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
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