The award honors and celebrates faculty who go above and beyond to courageously defend their colleagues’ rights to free speech and academic freedom.
The Berkson Courageous Colleague Award honors faculty who demonstrate exceptional courage in defending the free speech and academic freedom rights of their colleagues, especially in moments of controversy or institutional pressure.
Recipients are individuals who not only speak up, but do so at personal or professional cost, modeling the kind of principled support that sustains a culture of free expression in higher education.
The award’s namesake, Mark Berkson, is a professor of religion at Hamline University who publicly defended his colleague Erika López Prater after she lost her job for showing images of the prophet Muhammad in an art history class. While many accused López Prater of Islamophobia and called for her dismissal, Berkson spoke out in her defense despite facing similar accusations and professional risk himself.
FIRE accepts nominations for the Berkson Courageous Colleague Award on a rolling basis. If you know a faculty member who has stood up for a colleague under fire, we invite you to nominate them. Award recipients are selected by FIRE based on demonstrated commitment to free expression and the impact of their actions.
Learn more about how FIRE works with faculty
When Hamline University declined to renew professor Erika López Prater’s contract after she showed an image of the prophet Muhammad in an art history class, Mark Berkson chose to speak out.
Despite the professional risk, Berkson publicly defended his colleague’s right to teach challenging material and criticized university leadership for failing to uphold principles of academic freedom. In doing so, he modeled the kind of courage this award was created to recognize.
For his actions, Berkson received FIRE’s inaugural Berkson Courageous Colleague Award. Berkson said in his acceptance speech:
We live in a time when faculty can face the loss of jobs, condemnation by their supervisors and their students, and endure hits to their reputation with an impact on their careers just for teaching their subject matter. Teachers from primary school to graduate schools must have courage in the face of threats from the state, university administrators, and elsewhere.
"Without the help and leadership of FIRE, I am certain that I would have been forced out of my career of over 25 years." — Coastal Carolina University Professor Steven Earnest
Public college and university faculty who face a threat of sanction by their institution or have been punished for expressive activity — whether it’s instruction, scholarship, or speaking on issues of public concern — can submit their case to FIRE's Faculty Legal Defense Fund for consideration.
This report presents the results of a survey of 209 scholars in this “Scholars Under Fire” database who were targeted for sanction because of their speech between 2020 and 2024.
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