Hadley Arkes, PhD, earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago, where he studied with such luminaries as Hans Morgenthau, Leo Strauss, Herbert Storing, and Tang Tsou. He chose constitutional law as one of his fields and spent many days at the law school, developing a deep reverence for Philip Kurland. He taught at Amherst College for 50 years, the last 30 as Edward Ney Professor of Jurisprudence. He took leaves to visit at Georgetown and Princeton and to be a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Institute and a Bradley Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, where he wrote The Return of George Sutherland. He is the author of eight books, including First Things, The Philosopher in the City, Beyond the Constitution, Natural Rights & the Right to Choose, Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths, and Mere Natural Law. In 2013, he became Founder/Director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights & the American Founding.
J. Jackson Barlow, PhD, is Charles A. Dana Professor of Politics Emeritus at Juniata College, where he has taught since 1991. Earlier, he had been on the staff of the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution and Managing Editor of The New Federalist Papers, the Bicentennial project of Public Research, Syndicated. He was the editor of Securing the Blessings of Liberty: Selected Writings of Gouverneur Morris and author of a number of scholarly articles. Dr. Barlow holds a BA from Carleton College and an MA and PhD from the Claremont Graduate School. He was a Fulbright Scholar to the Czech Republic and a Garwood Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.
Bradley J. Birzer, PhD, is Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies and Professor of History at Hillsdale College. Dr. Birzer is the author of several books, including American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll; Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Mind of Christopher Dawson; and the award-winning Russell Kirk: American Conservative. He also is the co-founder of and Senior Contributor to The Imaginative Conservative. Currently, he is writing a 250th anniversary history of the Declaration of Independence as well as an intellectual biography of sociologist Robert Nisbet. Dr. Birzer holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame and a PhD from Indiana University.
Jeff Broadwater, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of History at Barton College. He holds a PhD from Vanderbilt University and a JD from the University of Arkansas. His publications include Jefferson, Madison, and the Making of the Constitution, a 2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title; James Madison: A Son of Virginia and a Founder of the Nation, which won the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association’s Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction in 2012; and George Mason, Forgotten Founder, which was awarded the 2006 Richard Slatten Prize for Excellence in Virginia Biography by the Virginia Historical Society.
Jane E. Calvert, PhD, is Founding Director and Chief Editor of the John Dickinson Writings Project (JDP). She received her doctorate in early American history from the University of Chicago. Her first monograph, Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson (2009), exemplifies her research interests in the intersection of theology and political thought in the Colonial and Founding eras. In 2024, after teaching at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the University of Kentucky, and Yale University, she began working full time on the JDP, which she founded in 2010 to produce The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson. She recently published Penman of the Founding: A Biography of John Dickinson. Her work has been supported by top research libraries around the country, including the American Philosophical Society, the Newberry Library, and the Huntington Library, and private foundations, as well as by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
John Patrick Coby, PhD, is Esther Booth Wiley 1934 Professor of Government Emeritus at Smith College in Massachusetts, where he taught political theory and American political thought from 1985 to 2022. He is the author of six books, including The Constitutional Convention of 1787: Constructing the American Republic, and more than 100 journal articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and book reviews. At Smith College, he was awarded three teaching prizes: the Smith College Faculty Teaching Award, the Sherrerd Prize for Distinguished Teaching, and the Board of Trustees Honored Professor Award.
Steven Forde, PhD, is University of North Texas Emeritus Professor of Political Science. He received his BA from Yale University and his MA and PhD from the University of Toronto. After retiring from the University of North Texas, he taught some classes at St. John’s College in Santa Fe. His principal field of study is political philosophy from ancient to modern, including American political thought, particularly the thought of Benjamin Franklin. Dr. Forde is the author of The Ambition to Rule: Alcibiades and the Politics of Imperialism in Thucydides and Locke, Science, and Politics in addition to a number of essays on Benjamin Franklin.
Brenda Hafera is Assistant Director and Senior Policy Analyst in The Heritage Foundation’s B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies. She previously served as Director of International and Continuing Education at The Fund for American Studies and Assistant Director of the Matthew J. Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good at Villanova University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science, a Bachelor of Science in finance, and a master’s in political science from Villanova University. She also has been a Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute and a James Madison Fellow at Hillsdale College. Her articles have appeared in such publications as Modern Age, The Federalist, Law & Liberty, The National Interest, RealClear Public Affairs, and The Hill.
Carson Holloway, PhD, is Department Chair and Professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, and a Washington Fellow in the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life. He is the author of Hamilton Versus Jefferson in the Washington Administration: Completing the Founding or Betraying the Founding? and co-editor, with Bradford P. Wilson, of The Political Writings of Alexander Hamilton and The Political Writings of George Washington. He has been a Visiting Fellow in Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and a Visiting Fellow in American Political Thought at The Heritage Foundation. His scholarly articles have appeared in the Review of Politics; Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy; and Perspectives on Political Science. He also has written for First Things, The New Criterion, National Affairs, Public Discourse, National Review, Law & Liberty, The Federalist, The American Spectator, and The American Conservative. Professor Holloway received his BA from the University of Northern Iowa and his PhD from Northern Illinois University.
Thomas S. Kidd, PhD, is Research Professor of Church History and John and Sharon Yeats Endowed Chair of Baptist Studies at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a senior research scholar at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion. He is the author of many books, including Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh; Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father; American History, Vols. 1 and 2; American Colonial History: Clashing Cultures and Faiths; Baptists in America: A History; Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots; and God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution. Dr. Kidd received his PhD in history from the University of Notre Dame and earned BA and MA degrees from Clemson University.
John G. Malcolm is Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government, Director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies, and a Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He clerked for federal judges in the Northern District of Georgia and on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. For 10 years, he worked at the Department of Justice as an Assistant United States Attorney, an Associate Independent Counsel, and a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division and received numerous service awards, including the Director’s Award for Superior Performance by an Assistant United States Attorney. From 2004 through 2009, he served as an Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the Motion Picture Association. He then served as a Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at Pepperdine Law School. From 2010 to 2012, he was General Counsel for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Mr. Malcolm has been active in charitable and civic organizations and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve on the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid for low-income Americans. He received his JD from Harvard Law School.
Wilfred M. McClay, PhD, is Professor of History at Hillsdale College, where he holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair of Classical History and Western Civilization. In 1995, his The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America received the Organization of American Historians’ Merle Curti Award for the best book in American intellectual history. Among his other books are The Student’s Guide to U.S. History; Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America; Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past; Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Public Life in Modern America; and the award-winning Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story. He served for 11 years on the National Council on the Humanities and is currently a member of the U.S. Commission on the Semiquincentennial. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Academy of Education and received the Bradley Prize in 2022. He is a graduate of St. John’s College (Annapolis) and received his PhD in history from Johns Hopkins University.
Mackubin Owens, PhD, is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a Fellow at the Claremont Institute. From 1987 until 2015, he was Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. From 2015 until 2018, he was the Academic Dean of the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC. Dr. Owens received his PhD in political philosophy from the University of Dallas. He served 30 years in the Marine Corps and Marine Corps Reserve (1964–1994). He is the author of the FPRI monograph Abraham Lincoln: Leadership and Democratic Statesmanship in Wartime and U.S. Civil–Military Relations After 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil–Military Bargain and co-author of U.S. Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy: The Rise of an Incidental Superpower. He also has served as editor of Orbis, FPRI’s quarterly journal of world affairs.
Greg Schaller is Director of the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University. Before joining the Centennial Institute, he served as President of the John Jay Institute, which tripled in size under his leadership. He previously served as an Associate Professor of Politics at CCU from 2009–2017, developing the politics major and working closely with Centennial Institute co-founder John Andrews on many initiatives. During his tenure, he launched a successful student internship program that has connected numerous students to the Colorado and U.S. capitals as well as such public policy organizations as The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. Schaller also has taught at Villanova University and St. Joseph’s University. He holds a BA in political science and history from Eastern University and an MA in political science from Villanova University. His fields of expertise include American government, constitutional law, statesmanship, and public policy.
Colleen A. Sheehan, PhD, is Professor of Politics in Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. She has served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and on the Pennsylvania State Board of Education. She is the recipient of the Earhart Fellowship, Bradley Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship; the Mary and Kennedy Smith Fellowship and Garwood Fellowship from Princeton University’s James Madison Program; the Claremont Institute’s Henry Salvatori Prize; and the Martin Manley Teacher of the Year Award from Villanova University, where she taught for more than 30 years. In addition to articles in The American Political Science Review, William and Mary Quarterly, Review of Politics, Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, and The Wall Street Journal, she is the author of James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government and The Mind of James Madison: The Legacy of Classical Republicanism; co-editor (with Gary L. McDowell) of Friends of the Constitution: Writings of the “Other” Federalists of 1787–88; and co-editor (with Jack Rakove) of The Cambridge Companion to The Federalist. Her current projects include The Hartfield Footnote: An Interpretation of Jane Austen’s Emma and “The Madisonian Moment.”
Matthew Spalding, PhD, is Kirby Chair in Constitutional Government at Hillsdale College and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale’s Washington, DC, campus. As Vice President for Washington Operations, he also oversees the Allan P. Kirby, Jr., Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship and Hillsdale’s educational programs in the nation’s capital. He is the author of We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future; A Sacred Union of Citizens: Washington’s Farewell Address and the American Character; and Patriot Sage: George Washington and the American Political Tradition. He also was executive editor of the first two editions of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution. Before joining Hillsdale, Dr. Spalding was Vice President of American Studies at The Heritage Foundation and founding director of its B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics. He is a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy and serves on the boards of the Steamboat Institute and the New College of Florida. In 2020, Dr. Spalding was appointed Executive Director of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission, which produced the 1776 Report. Dr. Spalding received his BA from Claremont McKenna College and his MA and PhD in government from the Claremont Graduate School.
C. Bradley Thompson, PhD, is Professor of Political Philosophy at Clemson University, Executive Director of the Snow Institute for the Study of Capitalism, and founder of Clemson’s Lyceum Program. He received his PhD from Brown University and has been a visiting scholar at Harvard, Princeton, and the University of London. Dr. Thompson’s many books include the award-winning John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty; John Adams’s Revolutionary Writings; Anti-Slavery Political Writings, 1833–1860: A Reader; Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea; America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration that Defined It; What America Is; and the two-volume Political Thought of the American Revolution: A Reader. His Substack site, “The Redneck Intellectual,” is devoted to current intellectual and cultural trends, politics, and K–12 education. Dr. Thompson is also the founder, publisher, and chief blogger at EdWatchDaily.com and founder and publisher of Loco-Foco Press.
Gillian Richards Augros is a Senior Research Associate in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation. She previously worked as a journalism fellow with The Daily Signal and as a copy editor at Regnery Publishing. She received a BA in philosophy (summa cum laude) and an MA in human rights from the Catholic University of America and earned student fellowships with the Hertog Foundation, Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Honors Scholars, Common Sense Society, and Philadelphia Society in addition to Catholic University’s Röpke–Wojtyła Fellowship. Her articles have appeared in Law & Liberty, The Washington Times, The American Conservative, and The American Mind.
