Leo Strauss Award

Leo Strauss Award

Nominations are closed.

The Strauss Award honors the best doctoral dissertation in the field of political philosophy.

The award was developed by former students of Strauss’ who sought to recognize his extraordinary influence on generations of students and his contributions to the field of political philosophy. He was a major figure in the department of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1949 to 1967. The award is presented at the APSA Annual Meeting and carries a cash prize of $750.

Nomination Information

Eligibility: Nominees do not have to be members of APSA, affiliated with an institution in the United States, or an American citizen in order to be considered for an award.
Dissertations must have been successfully defended within the previous two calendar years (dissertations for the 2026 award must be defended in 2024 or 2025).

Self-nominations are accepted. Nominations from non-PhD departments and institutions are also welcome if the nominee is currently employed there.

APSA will accept only one nomination for the Strauss Award per school or political science department.

Award Committee

Chair

Jennet Kirkpatrick, Arizona State University

Member

Mark Lutz, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Member

Jasmine Yarish, University of the District of Columbia

Listing of Awardees

Year	Author	Dissertation	Submitted by
2025	David Guerrero	Reframing Expressive Freedom: Free Speech Libertarianism, Republicanism, and the Political Economy of Communication	University of Barcelona and University of Groningen
2024	William Tilleczek	Powers of Practice: Michel Foucault and the Politics of Asceticism	McGill University
2023	Sara Hassani Nazli Konya	Cloistered Infernos: The Politics of Self-Immolation in the Persian Belt The Inappropriable People of Gezi: Refusal, Protest, Desire	New School for Social Research Cornell University
2022	Shuk Ying Chan Siddhant Issar	Postcolonial Global Justice Thinking with Black Lives Matter: Towards a Critical Theory of Racial Capitalism	Princeton University University of Massachusetts Amherst
2021	David Lowry Pressly	Being Accountable: Privacy, Self, and Society	Harvard University
2020	Elena Gambino	Presence in Our Own Land: Second Wave Feminism and the Lesbian Body Politic	University of Minnesota
2020	Tejas Parasher	Self-Rule and the State in Indian Political Thought, 1880-1950	University of Chicago
2019	Adam Lebovitz	Colossus: Constitutional Theory in America and France, 1776-1799	Harvard University
2018	Tae-Yeoun Keum	Plato and the Mythic Tradition of Political Thought	Harvard University
2017	Kevin Duong	Democratic Terror: Redemptive Violence and the Formation of Nineteenth Century France	Cornell University
2016	Matthew Longo	Sovereignty in the Age of Securitization: A Study on Borders and Bordering in the United States after 9/11	Yale University
2015	Teresa Bejan	Mere Civility: Toleration and its Limits in Early Modern England and America	Yale University
2014	Adam Sandel	The Place of Prejudice	University of Oxford
2013	Alin Fumurescu	Compromise and Representation: A Split History of Early Modernity	Indiana University, Bloomington
2012	Alison McQueen	Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times	Cornell University
2011	Daniel Lee	Popular Sovereignty, Roman Law and the Civilian Foundations of the Constitutional State in Early Modern Political Thought	Princeton University
2010	Joseph Mazor	A Liberal Theory of Natural Resource Property Rights	Harvard University
2009	Robert Alan Sparling	Johann Georg Hamann and the Enlightenment Project	University of Toronto
2008	Leigh Jenco	Individuals, Institutions, and Political Change: The Political Theory of Zhang Shizhao	University of Chicago
2007	Lars Tønder	Experiences of tolerance: Immanence, Transcendence, Hilaritas	The Johns Hopkins University
2006	Xavier Marquez	The Stranger’s Knowledge: Political Knowledge in Plato’s Statesman	University of Notre Dame
2005	Douglas Casson	Liberating Judgment: John Locke and the Politics of Probability	Duke University
2004	Christina Tarnopolsky	Plato and the Politics of Shame	Harvard University
2003	Arash Abizadeh	Rhetoric, the Passions, and Difference in Discursive Democracy	Harvard University
2002	Andreas Kalyvas	The Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt	Columbia University
2001	Christopher Nathan Dugan	Reason’s Wake: Political Education in Plato’s Laws	University of California, San Diego

Support for Scholarship

We are continually grateful for the contributions from APSA members and friends that make our work possible. Your donation helps continue the Strauss Award for future scholars researching political philosophy. Thank you for your support of APSA and scholars across the discipline.