AEI's largest event is its annual dinner, held each year in Washington, D.C. Up to two thousand guests gather for the gala, which features an individual who has made notable intellectual or practical contributions to improved public policy and social welfare. That individual receives the Irving Kristol Award and delivers the evening's main speech. 

The Irving Kristol Award replaces the Francis Boyer Award, AEI's highest annual award for the past twenty-five years. Named for a distinguished chief executive of SmithKline in the 1940s and 1950s, the Boyer Award was first conferred in 1977, on former president Gerald R. Ford. Boyer Award recipients have included prominent statesmen, intellectuals, jurists, educators, and executives--among them, in 1991, Irving Kristol.

John Howard will receive the Irving Kristol Award for 2008.  For the press release detailing this announcement, please click here.

Irving Kristol Award Recipients

2008 John Howard	2005 Mario Vargas Llosa
2007 Bernard Lewis	2004 Charles Krauthammer
2006 David Hackett Fischer	2003 Allan H. Meltzer

At AEI's 2003 annual dinner, President Bush delivered a historic address on the need for a new government in Iraq and the role it could play in spreading democracy in the Middle East.

• Video, audio, and text of Bush's remarks

Francis Boyer Award Recipients

1977 Gerald R. Ford 1978 Arthur F. Burns 1979 Paul Johnson 1980 William J. Baroody, Sr. 1981 Henry A. Kissinger 1982 Hanna Holborn Gray 1983 Sir Alan Walters 1984 Robert H. Bork 1985 Jeane J. Kirkpatrick 1986 David Packard 1987 Paul A. Volcker 1988 Ronald W. Reagan

1989 Antonin Scalia 1990 Thomas Sowell 1991 Irving Kristol 1993 Richard B. Cheney 1994 Carlos Salinas de Gortari 1995 George F. Will 1996 Alan Greenspan 1997 James Q. Wilson 1999 Michael Novak 2000 Christopher DeMuth 2001 Clarence Thomas 2002 Norman Podhoretz

View press releases related to the dinner and award.

For more information, please contact

Elizabeth Bowen
Director of Conferences
Telephone: 202.862.5880
Fax: 202.862.7171
E-mail: EBowen@aei.org