The Fund for American Studies (TFAS) and The Wall Street Journal are pleased to announce Kate Farmer, Cole Murphy and Suzanna Murawski as the three recipients of the 2025 Joseph Rago Memorial Fellowship for Excellence in Journalism. This year marks the first time since the Fellowship was founded in 2018 that three outstanding individuals have been selected in one year.
Farmer is a senior at Washington University in St. Louis, where she will graduate this spring with her undergraduate degree in philosophy, data science and text and tradition. She is also a writer and commentator for Young Voices and her work has appeared in various media outlets, including RealClearPolitics, Reason and The Washington Examiner.
Murphy is a senior pursuing his bachelor’s degree in business administration from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is currently a reporter for The Morning Dispatch. Murphy previously served as a fellow at The College Fix and editor-in-chief for the Technique, Georgia Tech’s student newspaper.
Murawski recently graduated from the University of Chicago, where she received a master’s degree in political theory and a bachelor’s degree from the university’s Fundamentals program. She is currently a Hilton Kramer Fellow at The New Criterion.
As Rago Fellows, Farmer, Murphy and Murawski will work with the Opinion section of The Wall Street Journal through a nine-month internship beginning this fall. This Fellowship is 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 Board before he passed away at the age of 34 in 2017.
Farmer, Murphy and Murawski are full of appreciation and gratitude for the opportunity to further Joe’s legacy at The Wall Street Journal through the Rago Fellowship. Farmer – who is also an alumna of the 2024 European Journalism Institute in Prague, a program co-hosted by TFAS and The Media Project – says she looks forward to “learning alongside some of the country’s brightest writers.”
“Writing for The Wall Street Journal has been my dream for years, and I’m grateful to the Rago family and to TFAS for making it a reality,” said Farmer. “I hope to do justice to Joe Rago’s legacy, and to continue on the tradition of thoughtful, incisive reporting that he left.”
Farmer, Murphy and Murawski become the ninth, tenth and eleventh recipients of the Rago Fellowship. They join former Fellows Elliot Kaufman, Matthew Taylor King, Alessandra Bocchi, Faith Bottum, Carine Hajjar, Sierra McClain, Jillian Lederman and Luke Lyman – many of whom have launched careers in journalism at The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and elsewhere since their time as Rago Fellows.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal has been my dream for years, and I’m grateful to the Rago family and to TFAS for making it a reality. I hope to do justice to Joe Rago’s legacy, and to continue on the tradition of thoughtful, incisive reporting that he left.” – Kate Farmer, EJI ’24, Rago ’25
TFAS will formally present Farmer, Murphy and Murawski with their 2025 Rago Fellowships at the 32nd Annual TFAS Journalism Awards Dinner on November 11 in New York City. During the dinner, TFAS will 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 2025 Robert Novak Fellowship Awards at the dinner.