Please submit your essay using the below form. The deadline for submissions is 11:59pm PST on October 6, 2024.
This year, the Buckley Institute is hosting three separate contests: one for American high school students, one for Yale undergraduates, and one for undergraduates at any other American college or university.
First place winners will receive $1,000, second place winners $500, and third place winners $250. All essay contest winners will be invited to the Buckley Institute’s Fourteenth Annual Conference on Friday, November 8, 2024, at the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale in New Haven, CT, to accept their prize.
Prompt
This year’s essay contest celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Woodward Report, a major statement on the need for free expression in general and at Yale University in particular. We invite U.S. high school students, Yale undergraduates, and the national undergraduate population to respond to the following quote from the Report and answer the questions below:
The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable. To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily also deprives others of the right to listen to those views.
The Report goes on to clarify that the “unfettered freedom” needed for intellectual discovery must at times favor free expression over “civility and mutual respect.” Do you agree? Our nation’s laws guarantee broad speech protections; beyond those, are there occasions where ethical, religious, or manneristic considerations should outweigh the intellectual gains afforded by free expression?
High School Contest
Current High School students should submit a response of between 700 and 800 words. Open to all students in Grades 9 to 12 who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
Yale Contest
Yale Undergraduates should submit a response of between 1,000 and 1,200 words.
National Undergraduate Contest
Undergraduates should submit a response of between 1,000 and 1,200 words. Open to all U.S. citizens or permanent residents enrolled as undergraduates at an accredited American college or university.