herzog foundation bill of rights essay contest

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Herzog Foundation announces winning students in Bill of Rights Essay Contest

The Herzog Foundation has announced the two winners and seven runners-up in its 2022 Bill of Rights essay contest for middle and high school students.

Middle schooler Jake Starkey from Northland…

Middle schooler Jake Starkey from Northland Christian School in Kansas City, Missouri and high schooler Emily Tannel from St. Augustine School in Colgate, Wisconsin took the two top prizes.

“The Bill of Rights was ratified over 230 years ago and still stands as a beacon for our most fundamental rights as Americans,” said Todd Graves, chairman of the Herzog Foundation. “It’s crucial that all young students understand the significance of this founding document.”

The essay contest was open to middle and high school students currently enrolled in a Christian school or homeschool. Contestants wrote up to three pages on the following questions:  

What made the Bill of Rights so revolutionary and unique when it was ratified? How has the Bill of Rights shaped our country?   

The award-winning answers emphasized patriotism and individual freedom.   

“In creating the Constitution, it was decided that the founding fathers would write each amendment with the idea that the government should not have full control,” Jake wrote in his essay. “Today all of these rights are constantly under attack by corporations like media and news outlets, which is why it is important to remember the first amendment. This amendment gives me the pride to know that this idea of a truly free country has influenced the entire world.”   

“The Bill of Rights remains at the center of the Constitution and symbol of rights, and now to save them America needs to learn and respect it and all that it stands for,” Emily argued in her essay. “The biggest way to fight against this encroachment of our rights is to learn about what our rights are.”   

Jake and Emily each won a $250 award from the Herzog Foundation while the seven runners-up won $100. The students’ schools also won cash prizes.  

The Herzog Foundation, which publishes The Lion, is a charitable organization dedicated to catalyzing and accelerating the development of quality Christ-centered K-12 education.   

“Too many young people are losing sight of the civic values that characterize American democracy,” said Darrell Jones, president of the Herzog Foundation. “Many families and schools even shy away from celebrating our country and founding documents. This is unacceptable. At the Herzog Foundation, we want to reward students and schools that not only recognize our fundamental American beliefs, but celebrate them as well.”

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Russian Court Orders Prominent Human Rights Group to Shut

The Supreme Court ruled that Memorial International, which chronicled political repression in Russia, must be liquidated.

By Ivan Nechepurenko and Andrew E. Kramer

MOSCOW — Russia’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the nation’s most prominent human rights organization must close, signaling President Vladimir V. Putin’s longstanding determination to control the narrative of some of the most painful and repressive chapters of Russian history.

The court ordered the liquidation of Memorial International, which chronicled the harrowing persecutions in the infamous Stalin-era labor camps in an effort to preserve the memory of its victims. The group, founded by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov and other dissidents more than three decades ago, became a symbol of the country’s emerging democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The decision comes after a year of broad crackdown on opposition in Russia as the Kremlin moved aggressively to stifle dissent — in the news media, in religious groups, on social networks and especially among activists and political opponents, hundreds of whom have been harassed, jailed or forced into exile.

Shutting down Memorial is also another step in Mr. Putin’s effort to recast Russia’s legacy as a series of glorious accomplishments and soften the image of the often-brutal Soviet regime. While the state opened a comprehensive Gulag history museum in Moscow and Mr. Putin laid flowers at a new monument to the victims of Soviet repression, the increasingly emboldened Kremlin has moved aggressively to remove alternative interpretations of Russian history by organizations it does not control.

In particular Mr. Putin is eager to convince Russians that their country is surrounded by enemies who wish to oversee its demise, a tack he has taken recently in demanding that NATO guarantee it will not expand farther eastward toward Russia. As such, the Kremlin wants the Russian public to focus on foreign foes instead of crimes committed by homegrown dictators.

In recent years, Mr. Putin has shown a keen interest in shaping interpretation of Russia’s history, publishing his views in lengthy articles about the Soviet Union’s key contribution to the victory over Nazism and “the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” His viewpoint includes a renunciation of the democratic steps taken in the 1990s, which included reforms, self-criticism and social and economic upheaval.

The hearing drew dozens of protesters outside the courthouse, and afterward families of those affected by Stalins’ repressions and opposition figures expressed outrage, pointing to the deepening level of repression under Mr. Putin.

Ilya Miklashevsky, 65, whose father and grandfather were both imprisoned in the gulag, said Memorial’s closure represents “a new step downward,” adding, “the country is sleepily moving downhill.”

Sergei Mitrokhin, a Russian opposition politician, said that Memorial was “the last barrier on the way to complete Stalinization of the society and state.”

“What we have now is still lite Stalinism,” he said, speaking on Ekho Moskvy, a radio station. “I am afraid it can turn way worse. It is a tragedy for our country.”

Memorial International oversees an archive of victims of Soviet persecution, mostly in the era of the gulags, the forced labor camps where Russians were imprisoned in harsh, debilitating conditions. Its database contains more than three million names — no more than a quarter of all victims, according to the organization’s estimates.

Memorial’s lawyers have dismissed all of the accusations against the group as unfounded and called its persecution “politically motivated.” In a statement , Memorial said that its members were intent on “finding legal ways” to continue their work.

In Washington, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the United States condemned the decision to close Memorial, which he called “one of Russia’s oldest and most respected historical and human rights organizations.”

Jan Z. Raczynski, chairman of the board of Memorial International, said that the group intended to appeal the ruling and that it would be allowed to operate for at least a month while the appeal was pending. It is unclear what will happen to Memorial’s archive and other physical items, including the ones it displays in a subterranean Moscow museum.

In a separate hearing on Wednesday, the Moscow City Court will rule on whether to shut down Memorial’s Human Rights Center, which compiles a list of current political prisoners in Russia. The center is accused of “justifying terrorist activities” by including members of banned religious organizations on the list.

The list includes Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned Russian opposition leader, who was poisoned in a clandestine operation widely believed to have been organized by the Russian special services. In Siberia on Tuesday, the authorities raided the homes of two regional heads of Mr. Navalny’s political movement, branded as “extremist” by a Russian court in June.

Mr. Raczynski said that the Russian authorities were seeking to whitewash Soviet history, and that the prosecutor had directly addressed historical issues in arguments before the Supreme Court, though the case was ostensibly about violation of the foreign agent law.

The legal pressure, he said, was intended to shut both Memorial’s historical research into Soviet repressions and current human rights advocacy. The two branches of the group’s work are related, he said, and both are now “seen as undermining the authority of the government.”

Criticism of Soviet policies, he said, runs counter to the “current government’s propagandistic concept that, ‘our government was always good.’”

“There’s an old, banal formula that whoever doesn’t know the past is doomed to repeat it,” Mr. Raczynski said. “The situation of the past decade shows we are moving in that direction.”

In another signal of the state’s efforts to block Memorial, a Russian court on Monday extended the term of Yuri Dmitriev, a historian who chaired the group’s regional office in Karelia, to 15 years from 13. Mr. Dmitriev, who discovered mass graves resulting from Stalin’s brutalities, was convicted of sexually abusing his adopted daughter, a charge he denied.

The judge’s ruling on Tuesday cited what it said were repeated violations of the foreign agents law. Passed in 2012, the measure has been criticized by the country’s opposition as a vehicle intended by the Russian state to stifle all dissent. It orders all organizations that receive foreign funding and engage in loosely defined political activity to label themselves as “foreign agents,” a designation that carries the stigma of being on the payroll of foreign governments.

The law imposes onerous requirements on those designated, including extensive financial disclosures. Memorial’s leaders say they have made every effort to comply with the requirements even though they regard the law as unconstitutional.

Yelena Zhemkova, Memorial’s executive director, said that mistakes are possible in its gargantuan task of keeping a registry of victims, but that they are “always corrected.”

“What Memorial does represents 33 years of hard work of very many people,” Ms. Zhemkova told the court. “We work for the benefit of our people and our country.”

During Tuesday’s hearing, Aleksei Zhafyarov, the prosecutor, said Memorial only “speculated on the topic of political repressions” but that in reality it tried to portray the Soviet Union as “a terrorist state” and aimed to “rehabilitate Nazi criminals.”

Mr. Zhafyarov’s statements echoed earlier comments by Mr. Putin, who called Memorial “one of the most reputable organizations” during a meeting with his human rights council this month, but also accused it of glorifying Holocaust perpetrators.

Mr. Raczynski, the chairman of Memorial’s board, said the state’s arguments were specious.

“The general prosecutor said we try to portray the Soviet Union as a terrorist organization,” he said. “Well, we don’t have to try. The Soviet Union was a terrorist organization. In no other country were so many citizens imprisoned under false political accusations.”

Ivan Nechepurenko has been a reporter with the Moscow bureau since 2015, covering politics, economics, sports, and culture in Russia and the former Soviet republics. He was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia. More about Ivan Nechepurenko

Andrew E. Kramer is a reporter based in the Moscow bureau. He was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on Russia’s covert projection of power. More about Andrew E. Kramer

Latah County Human Rights Task Force

Strengthening the bonds of community to embrace diversity and reject bigotry..

Welcome to the Latah County Human Rights Task Force webpage!

Congratulations to the 2023-2024 MLK Art and Essay Contest winners!

This year’s theme was FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND OUR LIBRARIES

The winners for the Art Contest were Cece Rose Ristene (St. Mary’s), Eduarda Gurge (Moscow Charter), Quinten Rowley (Moscow Charter), Hayley Cohee (Moscow Charter),

The winners for the Essay Contest included Cordelia Haley (Lena Whitmore), Leo Johnson (St. Mary’s), Fern Newlan (St. Mary’s), Catherine Apt (McDonald), Amy Zhou (Moscow Charter School), Naya Lee (Lena Whitmore), Emily Scout Heward (Lena Whitmore), Nora Algarni (Moscow Middle School), Lillian Camin, (Moscow Middle School), and Morgan Apt (Moscow High School).

A little about us and ways to become involved!

Our 2023 Martin Luther King, Jr. Breakfast on January 21st was a great success with an excellent presentation by Dr. Scott Finnie. A video of the Breakfast, including the Rosa Parks Awards and Dr. Finnie’s speech is now available here: 2023 Breakfast and Friends of Human Rights .

The Rosa Parks Award winners are available here: 2023 Rosa Parks Award Winners | Latah County Human Rights Task Force (humanrightslatah.org)

The Art and Essay Contest winners are available here: 2023 Art and Essay Contest Winners | Latah County Human Rights Task Force (humanrightslatah.org)

Dr. Scott Finnie’s Keynote address at the 2023 MLK Jr. Breakfast:

AREA RESPONSE TO ANTISEMITISM

Check out the recent Palouse Pride Day under Recent Events here: Palouse Pride Day 2021

Our mission:  To work for social justice for all people by supporting diversity, respect, and inclusiveness, while opposing bigotry, harassment, and discrimination.

Please click our Announcements tab for current or upcoming events. (For upcoming events visit: Upcoming Events )

These are annual events that the Task Force currently sponsors:

• Martin Luther King Art and Essay Contest – January
• Presentation of Rosa Parks Human Rights Achievement Awards – January
• Human Rights Day at the Moscow Farmer’s Market – September (Visit: HR Day )
• Great Moscow Food Drive – August
• Human Rights Education Programs for Area Schools – throughout the school year

and we encourage you to attend or support us in these events.

Meetings of the Latah County Human Rights Task Force are generally held the second Thursday of each month, and you are welcome to attend.

Please visit our Facebook page: Facebook

If you are interested in joining, volunteering, or attending a meeting, please see our Contact Us page: Contact Us

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A Conversation with Carrie Sheffield on Healing and Forgiveness Join the Herzog Foundation as we welcome Carrie Sheffield, a bestselling author, columnist & broadcaster from Washington, D.C. Carrie’s newly released […]

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