The Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award is an award created in honor of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. The Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards were established by Christie Hefner in 1979 to honor individuals who have made significant contributions in the vital effort to protect and enhance First Amendment rights for Americans. Since the inception of the awards, more than 100 individuals including high school students, lawyers, librarians, journalists and educators have been honored.
Nominees have traditionally come from the areas of journalism, arts and entertainment, education, publishing, law, and government, and winners are selected by a panel of distinguished judges.
The judges were Tom Bradley, Mayor of Los Angeles; Jules Feiffer, playwright and social cartoonist; Fay Kanin, president, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Victor Navasky, editor, The Nation; and Tom Wicker, columnist and associate editor, The New York Times.
The judges were Edward Brooke, US Senator, Massachusetts; Nat Hentoff, author and columnist, The Village Voice; Fay Kanin, president, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Judith Krug, director, The American Library Association; and Charles Nesson, Dean, Harvard Law School.
The judges were Yvonne Braithwaite Burke, partner, Kutak, Rode & Huie; Hamilton Fish III, Publisher, The Nation; Florence McMullin, Chair, The Washington Library Association Intellectual Freedom Committee; and Aryeh Neier, Professor of Law, New York University.
The judges were Harriet Pilpel, attorney, Weil, Gotshal & Manges; Studs Terkel, author and nationally syndicated radio show host; and William Worthy, international journalist and civil liberties activist.
The judges were Martin Agronsky, Agronsky and Company; Alan Dershowitz, professor, Harvard Law School; and Liza Pike, Program Director, Center for Investigative Reporting.
The judges were Burton Joseph, attorney, Barsy, Joseph & Lichtenstein; Harriet Pilpel, attorney, Weil, Gotshal & Manges; and Melody Sands, former owner of The Athens News.
The judges were Julius L. Chambers, president, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Maxwell Lillienstein, General Counsel, American Booksellers Association; and Anthony Podesta, founding president, People for the American Way.
The judges were Charlayne Hunter-Gault, New York correspondent, The MacNeil / Lehrer NewsHour; Anthony Lewis, syndicated columnist, The New York Times; Steven Pico, First Amendment lecturer and advocate; and Tom Wicker, political columnist, The New York Times.
The judges were Judith Krug, director, the American Library Association for Intellectual Freedom; Jack K. Landau, attorney an columnist, Newhouse Newspapers; Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Chicago Tribune; and Harriet Pilpel, attorney, Weil, Gotshal & Manges.
The judges were Herbert N. Foerstel, Head of Branch Libraries, University of Maryland; Robert Scheer, national correspondent, Los Angeles Times; and Maxine Waters, US Representative, California.
The judges were Arthur Kropp, president, People for the American Way; Barry Lynn, Co-host, Battleline news radio talk show; Eve Pell, investigative journalist, Freedom of Information Project; and Tom Wicker, political columnist, The New York Times.
The judges were Dennis Barrie, executive director, Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati; Norman Dorsen, Stokes Professor of Law, New York University Law School; Mark Goodman, executive director, Student Press Law Center; Barbara Kopple, documentary filmmaker; and Reginald Stuart, Assistant News Editor, Knight-Ridder Newspapers.
The judges were Rex Armstrong, Attorney and Volunteer Counsel, ACLU of Oregon; Jessica Mitford, author and social activist; and Carl Jensen, Founder, Project Censored.
The judges were Chris Finan, executive director, The Media Coalition; Marjorie Heins, Director an Staff Counsel, ACLU Arts Censorship Project; and Sydney Schanberg, journalist.
The judges were Anthony Griffin, attorney; Bobby Handman, president, People for the American Way; and Burton Joseph, attorney, Barsy, Joseph & Lichtenstein.
The judges were Nadine Strossen, president, ACLU; Peter S. Prichard, president, Freedom Forum; and Ann K. Symons, president, American Library Association.
The judges were Mark Goodman, executive director, Student Press Law Center; Molly Ivins, author and columnist, Creators Syndicate; Barbara Kopple, filmmaker; and Clarence Page, columnist, Chicago Tribune.
The judges were Floyd Abrams, partner, Cahill Gordon & Reindel; Lucy Dalglish; executive director, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; Robert M. O'Neil, director, Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression; and Nadine Strossen, president, ACLU.
The judges were Margaret Carlson, CNN's The Capital Gang and Time Magazine columnist; Ann Richards, former governor of Texas; and John Seigenthaler, Founder, First Amendment Center.
The judges were Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher, The Nation; Anthony D. Romero, executive director, American Civil Liberties Union; and Eugenie Scott, executive director, National Center for Science Education.
The judges were Nadine Strossen, president, American Civil Liberties Union and professor of law, New York Law School; Geoffrey Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at University of Chicago Law School; and David Rubin, professor and former dean, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University.
The judges were Hector Villagra; Patricia Schroeder; Robert Scheer; and Norman Lear.
The judges were Henry Weinstein from the University of California, Ramona Ripston and Dr. Charles C. Haynes, Director of the Religious Freedom Education Project.
The judges were Margaret Carlson, Laura W. Murphy Director if the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, and Joan E. Bertin Executive Director of National Coalition Against Censorship.
The judges were Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean and Professor of Law, University of California Berkeley School of Law; Lara Bergthold, Principal Partner at RALLY; and Davan Maharaj, editor-in-chief and Publisher of the Los Angeles Times Media Group.http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/hugh-m-hefner-foundation-announces-first-amendment-award-winners-for-2017-2225829.htm
The judges were Michael A. Bamberger, Author and Senior Counsel at Dentons; Shelby Coffey III, Journalist; and Zephyr Teachout, Political Activist and Professor at Fordham University School of Law.[6]
The judges were Karen Tumulty, Columnist and Correspondent; Neal Katyal Professor of Law and former Acting Solicitor General of the United States; and Michael B. Keegan, president of People for the American Way and People for the American Way Foundation.[7]
The judges were Ted Boutros, partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and global co-chair of the firm's Litigation Group; and Kyle Pope, editor-in-chief and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review.
The judges were Allison Stanger, Russell Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics at Middlebury College; Julia B. Chan, editor-in-chief of The 19th, an independent, nonprofit newsroom; and Will Creeley, Legal Director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).