WSJ names Rago fellows

The Fund for American Studies and The Wall Street Journal announced that Jillian Lederman and Luke Lyman as the two recipients of the 2024 Joseph Rago Memorial Fellowship for Excellence in Journalism.

The Fellowships are being awarded to two outstanding individuals for the first time since its creation in 2018. Previously, the award was given to one fellow per year.

Lederman is currently a senior at Brown University, where she will be graduating this spring with her undergraduate degree in political science and economics. She is also executive chair of the Hillel International Israel Leadership Network and president of Brown Students for Israel.

She has been featured in media outlets including The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and SiriusXM. Like Rago, Lederman grew up in Massachusetts.

Lyman is currently the Hilton Kramer Fellow at The New Criterion. Originally from Colorado, he is a 2023 graduate of Brigham Young University with a degree in political philosophy and art history. While at BYU, he founded the university’s first journal of cultural criticism, and earned grants and fellowships to study abroad in Paris and Rome.

As Rago Fellows, Lederman and Lyman will work with the Opinion section of The Wall Street Journal through a nine-month fellowship beginning this fall. The Fellowships are named in honor of Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer Joseph Rago, who was a rising star at The Journal and a key member of its editorial page team before he passed away at the age of 34 in 2017.

Lederman and Lyman become the seventh and eighth recipients of the Rago Fellowship. They join former Fellows Elliot Kaufman, Matthew Taylor King, Alessandra Bocchi, Faith Bottum, Carine Hajjar, and Sierra McClain – several of whom have launched careers in journalism at The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and elsewhere since their time as Rago Fellows.