WASHINGTON, D.C.--The eminent political essayist Charles Krauthammer has been selected to receive the American Enterprise Institute’s Irving Kristol Award for 2004, AEI president Christopher DeMuth announced today. Mr. Krauthammer will accept the award and deliver the Irving Kristol Lecture at the Institute’s annual dinner on February 10, 2004, at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Renowned for his intellectual acuity, political independence, and lucid writing, Charles Krauthammer has profoundly influenced American foreign policy debate and doctrine. He coined and developed the Reagan Doctrine (Time, April 1985), defined the structure of the post-Cold-War world in “The Unipolar Moment” (Foreign Affairs, 1990–1991), wrote the definitive critique of liberal internationalism in “A World Imagined” (New Republic, March 1999), and outlined a radically new direction for American foreign policy months before 9/11 in “The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto and the New American Unilateralism” (Weekly Standard, June 2001).

Mr. Krauthammer’s weekly column for the Washington Post, which has appeared since 1985, is syndicated in more than 125 newspapers worldwide. He also writes a monthly essay for Time magazine, is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and the New Republic, serves on the editorial boards of the National Interest and the Public Interest, and is a weekly panelist on Inside Washington and a contributor to the Fox News Channel.

Born in New York City and raised in Montreal, Mr. Krauthammer was educated at McGill University (B.A. 1970), Oxford University (Commonwealth Scholar in Politics), and Harvard Medical School (M.D. 1975). While serving as a resident and then chief resident in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, he published scientific papers, including his co-discovery of a form of bipolar disease, that continue to be cited in the psychiatric literature.

In 1978, he left medical practice, came to Washington to direct planning in psychiatric research in the Carter administration, and began contributing articles to the New Republic. During the presidential campaign of 1980, he worked as a speechwriter to Vice President Walter Mondale. He joined the New Republic as a writer and editor in 1981.  His subsequent writings have made important contributions not only to foreign policy but to ethics, politics, and culture; in 2001, he was named a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.

Mr. Krauthammer has won the Pulitzer Prize (for Distinguished Commentary, 1987) and the National Magazine Award, the highest award in magazine journalism (for Essays and Criticism, 1984). He has been honored for his writing on oil economics (the Champion/Tuck Award for Economic Understanding),  civil religion (People for the American Way’s First Amendment Award), national security (Center for Security Policy’s Mightier Pen Award), and the Middle East (American Jewish Committee’s Mass Media Award). He was recently named one of the first four recipients of the Bradley Prize, awarded by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Mr. Krauthammer and his wife, artist Robyn Krauthammer, have one son, Daniel, a college freshman.

The Irving Kristol Award, AEI’s highest award, recognizes individuals who have made extraordinary intellectual or practical contributions to improved government policy or social welfare. The award was established in 2002 in honor of AEI senior fellow Irving Kristol, replacing the Institute’s Francis Boyer Award, which had been awarded annually for the previous twenty-five years. The Kristol Award is selected by the AEI Council of Academic Advisers.

Following is a list of Kristol Award and Boyer Award recipients. Many of their lectures are posted on the AEI web site.

Irving Kristol Award Recipients:

2003 Allan H. Meltzer
2004 Charles Krauthammer 

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