Mickey Edwards served as a Republican congressman for Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District from 1977 to 1993. Photo Credit: Gia Regan.
Former Congressman Mickey Edwards will be honored for upholding the principles of the U.S. Constitution when he receives the Rogers State University Constitution Award during a Sept. 28 ceremony and luncheon on RSU’s Claremore campus.
Edwards represented Oklahoma’s 5th District for 16 years, including service on the House Budget and Appropriations Committees and he was chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee. After leaving Congress in 1993, he taught for 11 years at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government before moving to Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and then back to Washington, D.C., as vice president of the Aspen Institute, where he directs a bipartisan fellowship for elected public officials.
Since 1987, RSU has presented the Constitution Award to an Oklahoman who has demonstrated a strong commitment to the principles of the U.S. Constitution through his or her life’s work. The RSU Constitution Award was established in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.
Former Gov. George Nigh is scheduled to introduce Edwards during the luncheon, which will feature remarks from the honoree. The Constitution Award ceremony is scheduled for 11:30 a.m., Thursday, Sept. 28, in the ballroom of the Dr. Carolyn Taylor Center (formerly known as the Centennial Center) on the RSU Claremore campus.
Tickets are $50 per person, with sponsorship opportunities also available to help area high school and college students attend the luncheon, as well as provide scholarships for RSU students studying in fields related to government and public service.
Edwards, who grew up in Oklahoma City, has degrees in both law and journalism. He began his career as a newspaper editor and reporter and later won awards in advertising and public relations before being elected to Congress. While teaching at Harvard he returned to journalism as a weekly political columnist for the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times and broadcast a weekly commentary on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”
Edwards is a board member of both the Constitution Project, where he has chaired task forces on judicial independence and the war power, and the Project on Government Oversight. He was a member of the American Bar Association’s select task force on the use of presidential signing statements and the American Society of International Law’s task force on the International Criminal Court and has chaired policy task forces for both the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations. Edwards has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Among his books are “Reclaiming Conservatism,” published in 2008 by Oxford University Press, and “The Parties Versus the People: How to Turn Republicans and Democrats Into Americans,” published in 2013 by Yale University Press. His articles have appeared frequently in publications ranging from the New York Times and the Washington Post to Daedalus, The Public Interest, and the Atlantic. He is a frequent public speaker and has been a guest on many of the nation’s leading radio and television news and opinion broadcasts.
The Constitution Award recipient is selected by the RSU Constitution Award Board of Governors, which includes past honorees along with RSU President Larry Rice, Mitch Adwon, Jim Morrison, and Oklahoma Military Academy Alumni Association Executive Director Dr. Danette Boyle. The Board of Governors is currently chaired by former Cherokee Nation Chief Ross Swimmer who received the award in 1989.
Past recipients include former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Dennis Reimer, former Ambassador James Jones, U.S. District Judge David Russell, U.S. District Judge Claire Eagan, U.S. District Judge Joseph W. Morris, Senior Judge Stephanie K. Seymour, Chief Judge Robert Henry, Gov. Frank Keating, Judge Lee R. West, U.S. Rep. Lyle Boren, Judge Fred Daugherty, Chief Ross Swimmer, U.S. Speaker Carl Albert, Judge William J. Holloway, Jr., Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Gov. Henry Bellmon, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, Mayor Patience Latting, Justice Marian P. Opala, Sen. David Boren, Hannah Diggs Atkins, Joint Chiefs Chairman William J. Crowe, Jr., Judge James O. Ellison, Alex Adwan, Judge Thomas R. Brett, G.T. Blankenship, Sen. Charles Ford, Sen. Penny Williams, Sen. Anthony Massad and Gov. George Nigh.
For more information, visit www.rsu.edu/Constitution-Award or call 918-343-7773.