Dr. Sean McMeekin Receives VOC’s Lee Edwards Award for Scholarship

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) is proud to announce Dr. Sean McMeekin as a 2025 recipient of the Lee Edwards Award for Outstanding Scholarship. VOC’s signature honor for academic achievement, the Lee Edwards Award, recognizes leading minds in the fight against communism. Dr. McMeekin is a member of the Academic Council at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, the Francis Flournoy Professor of European History and Culture at Bard College, and the winner of ISI’s 2025 Conservative Book of the Year for his new work, To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism. 

Like Lee Edwards, Sean McMeekin is a compelling writer. The New York Review of Books called his book, July 1914, “Almost impossible to put down. A punchy and riveting narrative.” The BBC said of Stalin’s War, “Remarkable book…meticulously researched…elegantly written.” 

“Professor McMeekin is a uniquely gifted educator, a world-class author, and an ardent anticommunist, said Dr. Eric Patterson, VOC’s President and CEO. “The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is honored to grant him the Lee Edwards Award for Outstanding Scholarship for his lifelong pursuit of truth about the crimes of communism and his dedication to preparing the next generation to stand for freedom.” 

Dr. McMeekin was presented with the Lee Edwards Award on October 16 at VOC’s educator conference in partnership with the University of Texas at Austin, Teaching the Twentieth Century: Communism and Dissent. Dr. McMeekin provided keynote remarks, during which he said, “Teaching the truth about communism to this generation is not easy as there has been so much misinformation. But, the historical record is unassailable and I am very proud of the work of this conference.” 
 
The award is named for VOC Co-founder and Chairman Emeritus, Dr. Lee Edwards, a preeminent historian of contemporary American history and political thought. A prolific writer, Dr. Edwards authored 25 books and hundreds of articles and essays. He passed away in December of 2024, and this annual award is one of the many ways his memory lives on at VOC. 
 
Dr. Sean McMeekin holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches courses in modern European, Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet history and is the author of Stalin’s War (2021); The Russian Revolution (2017); The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (2015, awarded the Arthur Goodzeit Book Prize); July 1914: Countdown to War (2013); The Russian Origins of the First World War (2011, winner of the Norman B. Tomlinson Jr. Book Prize); The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power (2010, winner of the Barbara Jelavich Book Prize); History’s Greatest Heist: The Looting of Russia by the Bolsheviks (2008); The Red Millionaire (2004); and numerous articles and essays. 

Photo: Dr. Sean McMeekin receiving VOC’s Lee Edwards Award for Scholarship (center) alongside Dr. Alexander S. Duff, Associate Professor in the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin (left), Dr. Eric Patterson, President and CEO of VOC (right), and Dr. F. Flagg Taylor IV, Chair of VOC’s Academic Council and Executive Director & Professor Center for Civics, Culture, & Society at Miami University (right).