Maine Students Honored in Essay Contest

Gould Academy students have claimed all three top honors in this year’s Camden Conference Bill Taylor Essay Contest, with first prize in the alternate category going to a student from Yarmouth High School.

Fritts Johnson took first place for his essay “Preventing a Nuclear Iran Through Multilateral Diplomacy and Soft Power.” Ella Wilder earned second place for “Let’s Get Serious: A Multilateral Approach to Syrian Reconstruction,” and Eoin Sullivan captured third place for “Exploited and Abandoned: U.S. and Turkish Policy Toward the Kurds, the Obstacles to Independent Kurdistan, and a Framework for a Free Nation.” Julia Soelberg of Yarmouth High School received first prize in the alternate category for her literature review “The Clash of Values.”

All essays addressed this year’s conference theme, “Today’s Middle East: Power, Politics & Players.” Among the attendees at the February conference were 119 high school students from 16 Maine high schools participating in Camden Conference in the Classroom. Stephen Harder, member of the judging committee and Professor Emeritus of Practice of Law, NYU Shanghai, commented that, “All the essays show a lot of work and thought and certainly would be credible at the college level. The student writers and their teachers should be commended.”

The contest was established in 2014 by Capt. William D. “Bill” Taylor (1921–2015), a decorated Navy officer and Camden Conference volunteer who believed deeply in the value of research and civic engagement with world affairs.