The Fund for American Studies (TFAS) and The Wall Street Journal are pleased to announce Jillian Lederman and Luke Lyman as the two recipients of the 2024 Joseph Rago Memorial Fellowship for Excellence in Journalism. The Fellowships are being awarded to two outstanding individuals for the first time since its creation in 2018. Previously, the award was given to one fellow per year.
Lederman is currently a senior at Brown University, where she will be graduating this spring with her undergraduate degree in political science and economics. She is also executive chair of the Hillel International Israel Leadership Network and served as president of Brown Students for Israel. She has been featured in media outlets including The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and SiriusXM. Like Rago, Lederman grew up in Massachusetts.
Lyman was previously the Hilton Kramer Fellow at The New Criterion. Originally from Colorado, he is a 2023 graduate of Brigham Young University with a degree in political philosophy and art history. While at BYU, he founded the university’s first journal of cultural criticism, and earned grants and fellowships to study abroad in Paris and Rome.
As Rago Fellows, Lederman and Lyman will work with the Opinion section of The Wall Street Journal through a nine-month fellowship beginning this fall. The Fellowships are named in honor of Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer Joseph Rago, who was a rising star at The Wall Street Journal and a key member of its editorial page team before he passed away at the age of 34 in 2017.
Lederman and Lyman become the seventh and eighth recipients of the Rago Fellowship. They join former Fellows Elliot Kaufman, Matthew Taylor King, Alessandra Bocchi, Faith Bottum, Carine Hajjar, and Sierra McClain – several of whom have launched careers in journalism at The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and elsewhere since their time as Rago Fellows.
As the current 2023 Rago Fellow, Sierra McClain expressed her thanks for the opportunity to work with writers and editors at The Wall Street Journal, whom she has long admired.
“Working at the Journal is an incredible experience,” said McClain. “I’m learning so much from the thoughtful, intelligent, and principled journalists who write and edit the paper’s opinion pages. I am grateful to TFAS, the Rago family, and The Wall Street Journal editorial board for giving me this wonderful opportunity.”
Working at the Journal is an incredible experience. I’m learning so much from the thoughtful, intelligent, and principled journalists who write and edit the paper’s opinion pages. I am grateful to TFAS, the Rago family, and The Wall Street Journal editorial board for giving me this wonderful opportunity.” – Sierra McClain, Rago ’23
TFAS will formally present Lederman and Lyman with the 2024 Rago Fellowships at the 31st Annual TFAS Journalism Awards Dinner on Nov. 12, 2024, in New York City. During the dinner, TFAS will also honor prominent leaders in journalism with the Thomas L. Phillips Career Achievement Award and the Kenneth Y. Tomlinson Award for Outstanding Journalism. TFAS will also present a new class of rising journalists with the 2024 Robert Novak Fellowship Awards.
To learn more about the awards dinner, please visit TFAS.org/Jawards31.