The Harvey M. Applebaum '59 Award is conferred on a Yale College senior for an outstanding essay based on research that has substantial use of national government or intergovernmental organization (IGO) information, including documents or data. The prize is an award of $500.
This prize was established in 2008 by the daughters of Harvey M. Applebaum, class of 1959, in honor of his 70th birthday. Mr. Applebaum is a senior counsel, specializing in international trade and antitrust law, with the Washington firm of Covington & Burling LLP and a lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law. He is a past Chairman of the Association of Yale Alumni and the Yale Alumni Magazine board.
Senior essays submitted for consideration for the Applebaum Award must be based in some part on research material produced or published by national governments and/or intergovernmental organizations (IGO). Research material may be held within Yale's collections or may be available in digital format. Examples include:
- United States federal government
- Canadian federal government
- European Union
- United Nations
- Food and Agriculture Organization
- List of additional IGOs from Northwestern University
View complete list of previous winning essays.
Submit your essay for consideration.
Senior essayists will also need to submit a statement explaining how they found out about the award and explaining their use of any of these collections in their essay. Statements may include phrases such as "the resource I used is central to my argument because...," "the variety of government documents used in my paper allowed me to...", and "this document best demonstrates the thinking of..."
Please contact Gwyneth Crowley, Librarian for Economics and US Government Information, Marx Science and Social Science Library, with any questions about the Applebaum Award.
The Applebaum Award is one of several senior essay prizes awarded by Yale University Library to honor outstanding undergraduate research and encourage use of library collections. See all Yale Library prizes.
Prize Winners from 2024
Ship Shaping: How Congress and Industry Influenced U.S. Naval Acquisitions from 1933-1938, Henry H. Carroll
Award Winner
Surveyor: Scratching for a Wild Moon, Nina Grigg
Honorable Mention
Prize Winners from 2023
“Am I Sick or Just Discarded?”: Psychiatry, Health Care Reform, and the Rise of Geriatrics in America, 1931-1954, Sophie E. Edelstein
Prize Winners from 2022
Structural Violence & Small Victories: Political Epidemiology of HIV Among MSM in Nigeria, 2000-2010, Debbie A. Dada
Prize Winners from 2021
Regulatory Agency Capture: How the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Approved the Mountain Valley Pipeline, AAKSHI AGARWAL
Award Winner
An Equitable Transformation of the Energy System: The Role of State-Level Incentives for Distributed Energy Resources, Trinidad A. Kechkian
Battling over Bargain-Hunting: Defining the American consumer through mass-consumption shopping practices, 1909- 1915, Angela Xiao
Prize Winners from 2020
Against Executive-Controlled Administrative Law Judges, Stephanie N. Higginson
Second Prize Winner
The 1950s “War on Narcotics”: Harry Anslinger, The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and Senator Price Daniel’s Probe, William J. Horvath
First Prize Winner
Prize Winners from 2019
Renewable Energy Access and Resilience in Urban Developing Areas: Distributed Solar Networks and Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading in Puerto Rico, Pascale Bronder
"Its Cargo Is People": Repositioning Commuter Rail as Public Transit to Save the New York–New Haven Line, 1960–1990, Seamus C. Joyce-Johnson
Prize Winners from 2018
Convergence Towards an Optimal Currency Area in the European Union, Santiago Botto Tornielli
From Enemy to Family: German War Brides and U.S.-German Rapprochement, 1945-1950, Monica Wang
Prize Winners from 2017
Influence and Effectiveness in the Years of Upheaval: Winston Lord and the Policy Planning Staff from 1973 to 1977, Max L.B. Cook
Kissinger’s Strategy in the Iraqi Kurdish Rebellion of 1972-75: False Start or Foundation of American-Kurdish Partnership?, Jonathan C. Esty
Of a Healthy Constitution: Socialized Medicine Between the Triumphs of Social Security and Medicare, Sarah D. Kim
Prize Winners from 2016
Treading the Path of Least Resistance: FDA's Regulation of the Subtherapeutic Use of Antibiotics in Animal Agriculture, 1970-2015, Colleen Flynn
The Re-Recruit, Devon Brody Geyelin
US Foreign Policy and the Soviet-Afghan War: A Revisionist History, Julie Lowenstein
Prize Winners from 2015
Moving the Needle: How Transparency Could Lower Costs and Improve Quality in United States Hospitals, Anna "Nina" Russell
The President's Wartime Detention Authority : What History Teaches Us, Anirudh Sivaram
Prize Winners from 2013
Strange Bedfellows: Business, Labor, Guest Workers, and Immigration Reform in the United States, 1986-2013, Tom Stanley-Becker
Prize Winners from 2012
"Missionaries of Ordered Liberty": U.S. Colonial Sponsorship of Self-Government in the Wake of the Spanish-American War, 1899-1904, Conor Crawford
Cease or Persist? Gene Patents and the Clinical Diagnostics Dilemma, Christopher Lee
Prize Winners from 2010
“The Dictates of Sound Policy”: Contending with the Western Indians under the New American Constitution, Avi Kupfer
Estimating the Returns to Expenditures in Canadian Elections: Evidence from a Regression-Discontinuity Design, Habib Moody