The Ciceronian Society is proud to announce our first conference award: The William G Batchelder III Memorial Award for the Study of Place.
William G Batchelder III passed away on February 12, 2022, after a long illness. Bill had been a legislator in Ohio from 1968 to 1998. After serving as a Common Pleas and State Appeals Court Judge, he returned to the Ohio House in 2006. In 2011, he realized his lifelong dream of becoming Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives. Throughout his long career in public life, Bill was motivated primarily by his love of place, particularly his love of Medina County and of the State of Ohio. When he was asked to run for Congress he declined, because he had no interest in leaving Ohio.
Bill was a financial supporter of the Ciceronian Society and even attended our meeting at Hope College in 2018. He revered our themes of Tradition, Place, and Things Divine, but his family believe it is particularly appropriate to honor his love of “Place.” For this reason, in collaboration with the Society the family has created the William G Batchelder III Memorial Award for the Study of Place.
Each year, a paper submitted to our annual conference focused on our Society’s theme of “Place,” broadly construed, will be chosen to receive the William G Batchelder Memorial Award for the Study of Place by the board or a select sub-committee thereof. The Batchelder family will pay $500.00, with the funds first dedicated to conference registration, and with the remaining funds from the prize being allotted to the award-winning scholar’s accommodation at the conference.
To learn more about William Batchelder III and the Ciceronian Society’s emphasis on the study of Place, check out Episode 15 of The Sower Podcast:
Winners
2025
“An Everyman’s Environmentalism: Love of Place as a Virtue”
Madeleine Austin lives in Pittsboro, NC with her husband, Joshua. She is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. When Madeleine is not playing her banjo, she works as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Reserves. Check out her YouTube channel!
Drawing on the work of Wendell Berry and others, Madeleine’s winning paper focused on the kind of love – storge– which motivates people to care for creation in the particular place they are.
2024
“War Against The State: Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the Defense of Localism”
Jeffery Tyler Syck is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pikeville.
Tyler’s academic research focuses on the development of American democracy and the history of political ideologies. He is the editor of the forthcoming book “A Republic of Virtue: The Political Essays of John Quincy Adams” and is completing a second book manuscript entitled “The Untold Origins of American Democracy.” This second book describes how the political debates between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson forever altered the republic created by the American founders – leaving behind an increasingly majoritarian democracy. His essays and articles on politics, philosophy, and history have appeared in several public facing publications including Law and Liberty, Persuasion, and the Louisville Courier-Journal. Tyler’s academic work has recently been published in the journal Pietas.
A native of Pike County Kentucky, Tyler’s political thought and writing are strongly shaped by the culture of Appalachia. With their tightly knit communities, the mountains of Appalachia have instilled in him a love of all things local. As such his writing most often advocates for a rejuvenation of local democracy and a renaissance of rural culture.
Tyler received a Doctor of Philosophy and Master of Arts in Government from the University of Virginia. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Government and History from Morehead State University where he graduated with honors.
2023
“State vs. Community: Nisbet & the Post-Liberal Right”
Luke C. Sheahan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Duquesne University, a Non-Resident Scholar in the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (PRRUCS) at the University of Pennsylvania, and Editor of The University Bookman. He is author of Why Associations Matter: The Case for First Amendment Pluralism (2020) and editor of International Comparative Approaches to Free Speech and Open Inquiry (2022). Sheahan’s scholarly articles and reviews have appeared in Humanitas, The Political Science Reviewer, Perspectives on Political Science, and Studies in Burke and His Time and he has contributed chapters on Robert Nisbet, free speech, and CS Lewis to several edited volumes.
His popular writing has appeared in Law and Liberty, Real Clear Civics, National Affairs, and the Heritage Foundation’s First Principles series. In 2023, Sheahan coauthored an amicus brief in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Luke received a PhD and MA in political theory from the Catholic University of America and a B.S. in political science from the Honors College at Oregon State University.