FIX EXCLUSIVESProfessor welcomes prize after ‘ideological discrimination that purged conservatives from American faculties over the past fifty years’
A scholarly prize through the Heritage Foundation that focuses on freedom and patriotism is opening up new opportunities for academics whose views do not align with the leftist ideologies that dominate higher education, one of its recipients told The College Fix.
“The establishment of the Freedom and Opportunity Academic Prizes has provided a much-needed opportunity for recognition of professors who have hitherto been excluded from academic awards because of their viewpoints,” Hillsdale College history Professor Mark Moyar said.
Moyar is one of more than a dozen scholars who received the conservative organization’s 2025 Freedom and Opportunity Academic Prize, which was announced last week. The initiative awards financial support to faculty engaged in work that furthers core conservative policy objectives.
Other recipients include the University of Pennsylvania’s Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Arizona State University’s Colleen Sheehan and Erika Bachiochi, and Baylor University’s Byron Johnson.
This year’s winners are individuals whose work explores the American Founding and fosters civic dialogue, as the country approaches its 250th anniversary, according to a news release.
In a recent interview with The College Fix via email, Professor Moyar (pictured) said his current and past research directly engages with themes central to Heritage’s mission and the founding of America.
“My most recent book, Masters of Corruption, is a story of the first Trump administration, in which career bureaucrats violated White House policy and squandered taxpayer money through waste, fraud, and abuse,” Moyar said. “It thus supports Heritage’s efforts to root out the deep state and eliminate needless spending.”
At Hillsdale, a private college in Michigan, Moyar teaches a core course in U.S. history that all history faculty are required to lead—an experience he said has kept America’s founders and their principles “fresh” in his work.
“The founding principles that I find most relevant to today’s world include skepticism about human nature, aversion to unchecked governmental power, recognition of military power as an indispensable national asset, and the linkage of democracy to religion and culture,” he said.
Moyar said receiving the prize holds personal as well as professional significance for him.
“The ideological discrimination that purged conservatives from American faculties over the past fifty years has precluded conservatives from receiving serious consideration for academic prizes,” Moyar told The Fix.
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Another prize recipient, John Yoo, (pictured) a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, noted that many Americans have lost confidence in higher education.
“American universities should not just generate knowledge for its own sake; they should research the conditions that strengthen and expand freedom and opportunity in the United States and the world,” Yoo stated in a statement through the foundation.
“In my field of constitutional law, Heritage has been an indispensable platform for the development of one of the most important elements for the survival of freedom and opportunity: the rule of law through a limited Constitution interpreted by judges who obey the original understanding of the Founders,” he said. Yoo also is a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
The academic prize supports original research, publications, and educational programs that address Heritage’s policy priorities and broader themes of freedom and patriotism. Individual awards range from $15,000 to $20,000, according to the foundation’s website.
For example, one of this year’s recipients, Professor Erika Bachiochi is leading a new project at Arizona State University to study the topics of women and gender from a conservative perspective. It includes a scholarly journal “grounded in the basic fact that sex is real,” The Fix previously reported.
Heritage President Kevin Roberts emphasized the importance of the prize’s mission in light of challenges facing higher education.
These scholars “are on the front lines of the fight to reclaim American higher education from the grip of leftist orthodoxy. This is not just an academic battle—it’s a fight for the soul of our nation,” Roberts said in a news release.
“Their work advances the cause of American exceptionalism and the conservative movement we lead. Heritage is proud to stand beside them,” he said.
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A statue of the Greek philosopher Socrates; Anastasios71/Shutterstock, Mark Moyar/Hillsdale College, John Yoo/University of Texas at Austin