News Release

First Prize in National Peace Essay Contest Awarded to Nebraska High School Student

June 30, 2005

WASHINGTON, DC – Jessica Perrigan of Omaha, N.E. was awarded first prize in this year’s National Peace Essay Contest, sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace.  A student at Duchesne Academy, Perrigan received a $10,000 college scholarship for her essay titled “Finding Peace: Japan and Cambodia.”  In announcing the winner at the Institute’s annual NPEC awards banquet on June 22, Institute President Richard H. Solomon commented on the high quality of the essays and the difficulty of the subject.  "This year's students tackled the thorniest problem facing the U.S. today—the intersection of democracy and peace –problems that policymakers are grappling with everyday.  The answers that these young people came up with shed new light on this important issue.”

Seth Dickinson of Middlebury Union High School in Ripton, Vermont was awarded a $5,000 scholarship for his second-place essay on “Colonialism and the Development of Democracy.”  Brittney Moraski, a student at Bark River-Harris High School in Bark River, Michigan won the third-place award of $2,500 scholarship for her essay on “Veni Vidi Vici is Only the Beginning: Long-Term Democratization in Today’s World.”.

Approximately 4,000 students from American high schools across the United States and in U.S. territories and abroad wrote essays for this year’s contest, addressing the complex issue of “Transitions to Democracy.”  In her essay, Perrigan compared the post-World War II education systems in Japan and Cambodia and found that the former prepared the society for democratic reforms, whereas repression of ideas and closing of schools in the latter accompanied increased unrest and tyranny.  She argued that education is necessary for democracy, “a government for the thinking,” to work.  “The process of education provides the means for which a population may institute social change and the basis of individual development, without which democracy will not succeed.”

Perrigan, Dickinson and Moraski joined the other 48 state-level winners in Washington, DC from June 18 through June 23 for an Institute of Peace program that introduced them to senior U.S. government and foreign embassy officials, members of Congress, and other experts involved in the making of American foreign policy.  They assumed the roles of diplomats, government officials, and members of the international community in a special three-day problem solving simulation focusing on Turkey’s transition to democracy.  The purpose of the exercise is to encourage the students to closely examine the challenges associated with democratization. 

You can read about the students’ unique learning adventure in Washington, DC on the National Peace Essay Contest Web site.

Additional Online Resources

• More on the 2005 Washington Award Week

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan, national institution established and funded by Congress. Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, promote post-conflict stability and development, and increase peacebuilding capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering others with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by directly engaging in peacebuilding efforts around the globe.