At AEI's 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

Allan H. Meltzer received AEI's first Irving Kristol Award at the dinner. Meltzer is known for pioneering academic work in monetary policy, political theory, and economic history; his many practical contributions to improved economic policy; and his devotion to individual liberty and government reform.

• Meltzer's lecture
• Past award recipients

The Irving Kristol Lecture is intended to illuminate central issues of public policy in contemporary America. The lecturer, selected by AEI's Council of Academic Advisers, is an eminent thinker who has made notable intellectual or practical contributions to improved public policy and social welfare.

The Irving Kristol Lecture is delivered at the AEI annual dinner in Washington.

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.

Past 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