Danielle Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Democratic Knowledge Project-Learn, a research lab focused on civic education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy as well as a seasoned nonprofit leader, democracy advocate, tech ethicist, distinguished author, and mom. She is a contributing columnist at The Atlantic Magazine and was the 2020 winner of the Library of Congress' Kluge Prize, which recognizes scholarly achievement in the disciplines not covered by the Nobel Prize. She received the Prize "for her internationally recognized scholarship in political theory and her commitment to improving democratic practice and civics education."

Danielle currently concentrates on democracy renovation: studying how to reconnect people to their civic power, experience, and responsibility via civic education and how to redesign our political institutions to improve their responsiveness, increase the accountability of officeholders, and reward the participation of ordinary citizens. Her most recent book, Justice by Means of Democracy, provides the foundation for this work. Her forthcoming book, The Radical Duke, a biography of an 18th century British political reformer, is due out with Liveright/Norton in 2026. Her many books also include the widely acclaimed Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality; Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.; and Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus. 

Outside the university, she is a co-chair of the Our Common Purpose commission on democracy reform at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, as board chair at Partners in Democracy , she advocates for democracy reform to create greater voice and access in our democracy, and to drive progress towards a new social contract that serves and includes us all. 

Andrew Delbanco became President of The Teagle Foundation on July 1, 2018, and has served on its Board of Directors since 2009. Since 1985, he has taught at Columbia University, where he is the Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies. Mr. Delbanco earned his A.B., A.M., and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University.

Mr. Delbanco’s most recent book, The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War (Penguin Press, 2018), was named a New York Times notable book. It was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf prize for “books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and human diversity” and the Mark Lynton History Prize, sponsored by the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, for a work “of history, on any subject, that best combines intellectual or scholarly distinction with felicity of expression.”

His other books include College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be (Princeton University Press, 2012), which has been translated into several languages; and Melville: His World and Work (Knopf, 2005), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times’ Book Prize in Biography. Mr. Delbanco’s essays appear regularly in The New York Review of Books and other periodicals on topics ranging from American literary and religious history to issues in higher education. He has won Columbia’s Lionel Trilling Award three times, for The War Before the War (2018), Melville (2005), and The Puritan Ordeal (1990).

Mr. Delbanco was elected president of the Society of American Historians for 2021-2022. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was a member of the inaugural class of fellows at the New York Public Library Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He is a trustee of the Library of America and previously served on the boards of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, the National Humanities Center, and the PEN American Center. Mr. Delbanco is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. In 2001, Time named him “America’s Best Social Critic.” In 2006, he was honored with the Great Teacher Award by the Society of Columbia Graduates. In 2012, President Barack Obama presented him with the National Humanities Medal “for his writings on higher education and the place classic authors hold in history and contemporary life.”

Daniel DiSalvo is Professor and Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Curriculum in the School of Civic Life and Leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He previously served as professor and chair of political science in the Colin Powell School at the City College of New York–CUNY and is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His scholarship focuses on American political parties, elections, labor unions, state government, and public policy.

He is the author of Engines of Change: Party Factions in American Politics, 1868–2010 (Oxford, 2012) and Government Against Itself: Public Union Power and Its Consequences (Oxford, 2015). His articles have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, Policy Studies Journal, and American Political Thought among others. DiSalvo also writes frequently for popular publications, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic Monthly, National Affairs, City Journal, Los Angeles Times, and the New York Daily News. He was previously the co-editor of The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Policy History. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University’s James Madison Program, the CUNY Graduate Center, and the Universidad de Los Andes (Colombia).

Justin Dyer is dean of the School of Civic Leadership at The University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Rex W. Tillerson Endowed Dean’s Chair and the Jack G. Taylor Regents Professorship. Dyer writes and teaches in the fields of American political thought, jurisprudence, and constitutionalism, with an emphasis on the perennial philosophical tradition of natural law. He is the author or editor of eight books and numerous articles, essays and book reviews. His most recent book, with Kody Cooper, is The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics: Political Theology, Natural Law, and the American Founding. Previously, he was professor of political science at the University of Missouri, where he served as the founding director of the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, a signature academic center for the study of American political thought and history. After attending the University of Oklahoma on a wrestling scholarship, he completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in Government at The University of Texas at Austin.

Justin Dyer is a Jack Miller Center Academic Council Member.

Beverly Gage teaches American history at Yale. She is the author of This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip through U.S. History, an on-the-road journey into the American past and present to mark the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026. Her book G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century (2022), a biography of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the Bancroft Prize in American History, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography, among other honors. In addition to her teaching and research, she writes for numerous journals and magazines, including The New Yorker, New York Times, and Washington Post.  

William A. Galston holds the Ezra Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, where he is a Senior Fellow. A participant in six presidential campaigns, he served from 1993 to 1995 as Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy. He previously served as professor and acting dean at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Affairs and founded the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) in 2001.

Galston is the author of eleven books and more than 100 articles in the fields of political theory, public policy, and American politics. His most recent books are Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy (Yale, 2018) and Anger, Fear, Domination: Dark Passions and the Power of Political Speech (Yale, 2025). A winner of the American Political Science Association’s Hubert H. Humphrey Award, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.  He writes a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal.

Bryan Garsten is Professor of Political Science and Humanities and the Faculty Director for the Center for Civic Thought at Yale University. His award-winning book, Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment, explores the history of political thought on rhetoric and argues for a politics of persuasion. In recent research he investigates fundamental tensions in the theory and practice of representative government and constitutional democracy, reflecting on Aristotle, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Rousseau, the Federalists, Benjamin Constant, and Marx, among others. His essay, "A Liberalism of Refuge," was one of the Journal of Democracy’s most-read articles of 2024. 

Garsten has long been interested in promoting liberal education. He coordinated the creation of a core curriculum for Yale-NUS College in Singapore and was lead-writer of a report, A New Community of Learning, about how that college approached fundamental challenges in liberal education. He chaired Yale’s Humanities Program, revitalized its link to its alumni, and set it on a path to successfully expand both the Directed Studies program and the major in the Humanities. He has been a member of the National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education and the Harvard Higher Education Leaders Forum.

He has also worked to promote thoughtful public discourse and demonstrate the civic value of liberal education. At Yale, he co-founded Citizens Thinkers Writers, a program for New Haven high school students, in 2016, and the Civic Thought Initiative in 2019. He is a member of the Alliance for Civics in the Academy and of the Civic Collaboratory of Citizens University.

Garsten's public writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Commonweal, Tablet, Politico, and elsewhere.

Dr. Allen C. Guelzo is a New York Times^® best-seller author, American historian, and commentator on public issues. He is Professor of Humanities in the Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. He holds an MA and PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania. he has been a member of the faculty at Eastern University (1991-2004), Gettysburg College (2004-19), and Princeton University (2019-2025)

Among his many award-winning publications, he is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (W^m. Eerdmans, 1999), which won both the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize in 2000; Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (Simon & Schuster, 2004) which also won the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize, for 2005; Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America (Simon & Schuster, 2008), on the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858; a volume of essays, Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas (Southern Illinois University Press, 2009) which won a Certificate of Merit from the Illinois State Historical Association in 2010; and Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction (in the Oxford University Press ‘Very Short Introductions’ series). In 2012, he published Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction with Oxford University Press, and in 2013 Alfred Knopf published his book on the battle of Gettysburg (for the 150^th anniversary of the battle), Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, which spent eight weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Gettysburg: The Last Invasion won the Lincoln Prize for 2014, the inaugural Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History, the Fletcher Pratt Award of the New York City Round Table, and the Richard Harwell Award of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table. His most recent publications are Redeeming the Great Emancipator (Harvard University Press, 2016) which originated as the 2012 Nathan Huggins Lectures at Harvard University, Reconstruction: A Concise History (Oxford University Press, 2018), and Robert E. Lee: A Life (2021), which was named one of the Wall Street Journal’s ‘Top Ten’ books of 2021. His most recent publications include Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy and the American Experiment (Knopf) which won the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize for 2024, and Voices from Gettysburg: Letters, Papers and Memoirs from the Civil War’s Greatest Battle (Kensington/Penguin Random House). Together with James Hankins he is the author of a two-volume Western civilization survey, The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition (2025).

He is one of Power Line’s 100 “Top Professors” in America. In 2009, he delivered the Commonwealth Fund Lecture at University College, London, on “Lincoln, Cobden and Bright: The Braid of Liberalism in the 19th-Century’s Transatlantic World.” He has been awarded the Lincoln Medal of the Union League Club of New York City, the Lincoln Award of the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia, and the Lincoln Award of the Union League of Philadelphia, in addition to the James Q. Wilson Award for Distinguished Scholarship on the Nature of a Free Society and the Lincoln Forum’s Richard N. Current Award. 

He lives in Gainesville, Florida, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Debra. His website is www.allenguelzo.com. They have three children - Jerusha Mast, Alexandra Fanucci, and Maj. Jonathan Guelzo (USA) – and eight grandchildren.

Sarah Igo is the Andrew Jackson Chair of American History at Vanderbilt University, with affiliate appointments in Law; Political Science; Medicine, Health and Society; and Sociology. A scholar of modern U.S. cultural and intellectual history, she writes about the human sciences, the sociology of knowledge, and the public sphere. Igo has authored two award-winning books— The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America (2018), and The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (2007)—and is a co-author of a leading U.S. history textbook, The American Promise. As Dean of Strategic Initiatives, Igo led a far-reaching curricular reform in Vanderbilt’s College of Arts and Sciences that launched in 2025, and she has been deeply involved in a number of projects to reinvigorate liberal education nationally. She is currently the Faculty Director of Dialogue Vanderbilt, the university’s cross-campus initiative to promote open inquiry.

Thomas Kelly is the Senior Vice President and Chief Program Officer at the Jack Miller Center. He oversees all Jack Miller Center academic programs, including the American Political Tradition Project, Founding Civics Initiative, and the annual National Summit on Civic Education.

He received his A.B. from the University of Chicago, where he studied international relations, and he earned his J.D. from the University of Notre Dame. He practiced as a commercial litigator in Chicago prior to his return to the Jack Miller Center, where he was previously a programs officer.

His writing on civic education has appeared in Newsweek, The Hill, National Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, RealClear Public Affairs, University Bookman, and The Fulcrum.

Yuval Levin is the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy and director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and the editor of National Affairs. He is a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, a contributing editor to National Review, and his essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The Atlantic, and many others. He is the author, most recently, of American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again. He served as a member of the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush and a congressional staffer at the member, committee, and leadership levels. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago.

Roosevelt Montás is John and Margaret Bard Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life at Bard College. He emigrated from the Dominican Republic to Queens, New York, when he was 12 and encountered the Western classics as an undergraduate in Columbia College’s renowned Core Curriculum, one of America’s last remaining Great Books programs. The experience changed his life and determined his career—he went on to earn a Ph.D. in English at Columbia University, where he served in various faculty and administrative capacities until 2025. Montás’s book, Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation, details his experiences as a student and teacher, telling the story of how the Great Books transformed his life and why they have the power to speak to people of all backgrounds. He specializes in American political thought and literature is also author of Becoming America: Four Documents That Shaped a Nation (forthcoming, Princeton University Press) and co-editor of The Princeton Readings American Political Thought (forthcoming, Princeton University Press). 

Lucas Morel is the John K. Boardman, Jr. Professor of Politics and Head of the Politics Department at Washington and Lee University. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Claremont Graduate School. He is a Worsham Teaching Fellow at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C., and was a Visiting Research Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. Dr. Morel is the author of Lincoln and the American Founding and Lincoln’s Sacred Effort: Defining Religion’s Role in American Self-Government; and editor of Lincoln and Liberty: Wisdom for the Ages. He recently co-edited Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln (October 2025). He conducts high school teacher workshops for the Jack Miller Center, Gilder-Lehrman Institute, Hillel International-Civic Spirit, and Liberty Fund. Dr. Morel is a board member and former president of the Abraham Lincoln Institute; a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance; a trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society; a consultant for the Library of Congress, National Archives, and the National Constitution Center; and currently serves on the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which will plan activities to commemorate the founding of the United States of America.

Lucas Morel is a member of the Jack Miller Center Board of Directors.

Economist and historian Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed is President Emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE.org) in Atlanta, Georgia. Before retiring to the emeritus role in 2019, he served as President of FEE for 11 years. Prior to that, he was founding president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan, for 21 years and an economics professor at Northwood University for seven years. 

He is author of seven books, the most recent of which are Was Jesus a Socialist? and Real Heroes: Inspiring True Stories of Courage, Character and Conviction. He has also authored more than 2,000 articles and newspaper columns around the world and lectured in all 50 states and most of the 94 countries he has visited. He holds two honorary doctorates (in Public Administration and in Laws) from Central Michigan University and Northwood University. 

In 2023, the President of Poland bestowed upon Reed the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, the highest honor that Poland gives to a foreigner. President Ronald Reagan was a past recipient.

He blogs at www.lawrencereed.com.

Diana Schaub is professor emerita of Political Science at Loyola University Maryland and a non-resident Senior Scholar in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies department at the American Enterprise Institute. She was the Garwood Teaching Fellow at Princeton University in 2011-12 and Visiting Professor of Political Theory in the Government Department at Harvard University in 2018, 2020, and 2022. From 2004 to 2009 she was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics. She was the recipient of the Richard M. Weaver Prize for Scholarly Letters in 2001 and is the author of Erotic Liberalism: Women and Revolution in Montesquieu’s “Persian Letters” along with numerous book chapters and scholarly articles in the fields of political philosophy and American political thought. She is a coeditor (with Amy and Leon Kass) of What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song. A member of the Board of Directors of the Abraham Lincoln Institute, she also sits on the publication committee of National Affairs. Her book on Lincoln’s rhetoric and statesmanship, His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation, appeared in 2021 from St. Martin’s Press.  

Diana Schuab is a Jack Miller Center Academic Council Member and Founding Civics Initiative Faculty.

Dr. Colleen J. Shogan served as the 11th Archivist of the United States, the first woman in American history appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate to lead the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). A noted author and political scientist, Colleen is deeply committed to civics education and prioritized sharing the records of the National Archives to a wider audience. Under her leadership, NARA launched numerous strategic initiatives to enhance services and make its holdings more accessible, both in-person and online, with the goal of cultivating public participation and strengthening our nation's democracy.

Prior to becoming Archivist, Colleen served in several cultural heritage leadership roles. She was Senior Vice President and Director of the David M. Rubenstein Center at the White House Historical Association, worked in the United States Senate, and served as a senior executive at the Library of Congress and its Congressional Research Service. She was the Vice Chair of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission and currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Board of Directors at the Women’s Suffrage National Monument Foundation.

A native of the Pittsburgh area, she holds a B.A. in Political Science from Boston College and a Ph.D. in American Politics from Yale University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. Colleen is the 2024 recipient of the American Political Science Association’s Hubert Humphrey Award for outstanding public service.

In addition to her role at More Perfect, she is also a Senior Fellow in Civics Education at Stand Together and an Adjunct Professor of Government at Georgetown University.

Colleen Shogan is a Jack Miller Center National Civics Council Member.

Hanna Skandera joined the Daniels Fund as president and CEO in December 2020. In her role, Hanna leads all programs and operations of the Daniels Fund, implementing the board’s vision, increasing impact, and ensuring the long-term sustainability of the Fund.

Founded by cable pioneer Bill Daniels, the Daniels Fund transforms communities through grantmaking and college scholarships in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Its mission is rooted in Bill Daniels’ own life story, vision, and values and its work is centered on developing contributing citizens, enhancing quality of life, driving upward mobility, and promoting the free market. To date, the Daniels Fund has provided more than $1 billion in grants and scholarships.

Hanna has over two decades of executive leadership experience and a proven track record of impact in a variety of national and state-level private, public, and nonprofit organizations.

Prior to joining the Daniels Fund as president and CEO, Hanna was CEO of Mile High Strategies, a consulting firm specializing in organizational impact, change management, growth, and organizational culture. She also served as editor in chief of The Line, a publication that offers new ideas and insights and encourages civil discourse on K-12 issues. She has founded multiple education initiatives and leadership programs, and been a visiting professor of Education Policy and Impact at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy and Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. Hanna was also a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a Pahara-Aspen Institute Fellow.

Previously, she served as secretary of education for New Mexico under Governor Susana Martinez, realizing the most significant gains for students in New Mexico’s recent history. In this role, she oversaw a budget of $2.7 billion and more than 300 employees. Her policy experience extends to serving as undersecretary for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, deputy commissioner for Governor Jeb Bush, and deputy chief of staff and senior policy advisor for U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

In addition to the Daniels Fund, Hanna currently serves on the boards of Academic Partnerships, Newsela, and Philanthropy Roundtable.

Tamara Mann Tweel is a Senior Program Director at The Teagle Foundation, specializing in civic initiatives. She joined the Foundation in 2019. In this role, she is focused on efforts to strengthen the civic dimension of undergraduate education. Previously, she served as the Founder and Director of Civic Spirit and the Associate Director of the Freedom and Citizenship Program at Columbia University. 

Aside from her service on the Jack Miller Center’s Board of Directors, she serves on the Advisory Council of the Princeton University Office of Religious Life and on the Board of Directors of PACE: Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement. She holds a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University, an M.A. in theology from the Harvard Divinity School, and a B.A. in political philosophy and art history from Duke University.

Tamara Mann Tweel is a member of the Jack Miller Center Board of Directors.

Hans Zeiger is President of the Jack Miller Center, a nationwide, nonpartisan educational venture to invest in the teaching and scholarship of the American political tradition and to grow the national movement for civic education. 

Hailing from the Pacific Northwest, Hans is the son, grandson, and great grandson of Puyallup, Washington public school teachers. Elected to the Washington State House of Representatives in 2010, he served as ranking member on the House Higher Education Committee before going on to serve in the Washington State Senate, chairing the Senate’s Education Committee and helping to pass the state’s half-credit civics graduation requirement. 

Hans led the Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute from 2012 to 2020. He was a Leadership Fellow of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, a Rodel Fellow of the Aspen Institute, and a trustee of the Washington State Historical Society. 

Hans holds a bachelor’s degree from Hillsdale College and a master’s in public policy from Pepperdine University. He also studied American politics at Claremont Graduate University. He previously served as a public affairs officer in the Air National Guard. Hans and his wife Erin have two daughters.  

Melinda S. Zook is the Germaine Seelye Oesterle Professor of History and Director of Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts for the College of Liberal Arts, Purdue University. She specializes in the history of political thought, religion, and women in early modern Britain and teaches courses on English and medieval history, as well as on such topics as Shakespeare’s kings and the history of toleration. She has published articles on radical politics, martyrdom, political poetry, queenship, religion, and teaching. She is the author of Radical Whigs and Conspiratorial Politics in late Stuart England (1999; paper, 2009) and Protestantism, Politics, and Women in Britain, 1660-1714 (2013) which was awarded Best Book on Gender for 2013 by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. She also co-edited, Revolutionary Currents: Nation Building in the Transatlantic World (2004) and Challenging Orthodoxies: The Social and Cultural World of Early Modern Women (2014); and Generations of Women Historians: Within and Beyond the Academy (2018). Her current project is entitled The Art of Liberal Arts: How to Reach, Teach, and Transform the Next Generation (under contract with Princeton University Press).

Elyse Alter is the Associate Director for Sphere, focusing on vision, strategy, and expansion of its content library. She is an experienced middle and high school educator and curriculum writer who has taught various technology and social studies courses in both urban and rural schools. In addition to her work in the K-12 space, she has led adult education classes and supported the creation of the Project for the Study of the 21st Century, a project focused on finding new ways to explore and tell stories through nonpartisan content and discussions. She is focused on applying her graduate degrees in instructional technology from Teachers College of Columbia University and education and human development from George Washington University to advance civic culture through civil discourse in the K-12 space. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and baby girl.

Michael Blauw is the Director of Strategic Partnerships and Impact at the Center for Civic Education. He is a proud alumnus of the Center’s flagship program, We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution. The program ignited in him a passion for political science and philosophy, eventually leading him to become an educator. He graduated from Hope College as a certified social studies teacher with a B.A. in political science. He then taught English in Malaysia as a Fulbright Scholar (where he met his wife). Once back in the United States, he taught several years of government, AP government, English, and, of course, We the People in his home state of Michigan and in Nashville, Tennessee. He then attended the Harvard Graduate School of Education and worked at Harvard’s Center for Ethics managing programs in educational ethics and civic education. He most recently worked for Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction as an education policy consultant. He, his wife, and his two boys live in Madison, Wisconsin, and enjoy hiking, kayaking, fishing, most sports, and, obviously, cheese curds.

Emily Burden has worked for liberal arts-focused nonprofits in Washington, DC since 2021, including as associate director of the Hertog Foundation and manager at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). She is an alumna of fellowships with The Fund for American Studies, Stand Together’s Koch Associate Program, and a part of the American Enterprise Institute’s Millennial Leadership Network. Emily graduated from Brigham Young University in 2020 with a degree in flute performance and maintains a small flute studio in Northern Virginia. 

Allan Carey is the Director of Sphere Education Initiatives at the Cato Institute where he leads the organization’s efforts to engage grades 5-12 educators, including the annual Sphere Summit, on civic education, civil discourse, and the institutions of civic culture. With nearly two decades of experience in education, Allan has previously taught in high schools, colleges, and nonprofits covering everything from history, philosophy, and economics to management and leadership courses. Allan holds a BA in political science, history, and philosophy from Ashland University and an MA in politics from the University of Dallas. He lives in Arlington, VA with his wife and son.

Lindsey Cormack is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Stevens Institute of Technology and the creator of DCInbox, a real-time archive that tracks and analyzes every official e-newsletter that members of Congress send to their constituents. Her research focuses on political communication, representation, and civic engagement. She is the author of How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It’s Up to You to Do It) and Congress and U.S. Veterans; her public-facing civic education work has been commended by President and First Lady George W. and Laura Bush as well as New York Governor Kathy Hochul. In addition to academic journal outlets, her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Fox News, and more. Lindsey regularly partners with schools, parent organizations, and civic groups to strengthen democratic understanding and participation. Through DCInbox, she brings primary-source congressional communication to the public in an accessible way.

Ioannis Evrigenis is the Alice Tweed Tuohy Professor of Government and Ethics at Claremont McKenna College. His research centers on natural law and rights, psychology, rhetoric, and sovereignty in the history of political thought. He is the author of Images of Anarchy: The Rhetoric and Science in Hobbes’s State of Nature (2014) and of articles and chapters on a wide range of issues and thinkers in political theory, as well as co-editor of Johann Gottfried Herder’s Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings (2004). Evrigenis received the Delba Winthrop Award for Excellence in Political Science for his book Fear of Enemies and Collective Action (2008), as well as the RSA/TCP Article Prize for Digital Renaissance Research for his article “Digital Tools and the History of Political Thought: The Case of Jean Bodin.”

He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, which conferred on him the Herrnstein Prize for his dissertation. He has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships, and has led several JMC-sponsored civics courses for Massachusetts teachers, as well as a seminar for community college professors in the Northwest.

Olivia Eve Gross is the Founder and CEO of High School Law Review, a civics education program that uses constitutional law to teach students how to engage constructively, write persuasively, and disagree agreeably. Through legal writing, debate, and publication, students develop critical thinking and civic leadership skills. All student work is published on HSLR’s digital platform, with top submissions featured in local, state, and national law reviews.

Olivia holds a B.A. with honors from the University of Chicago, where she studied Fundamentals: Issues and Texts, a great books curriculum centered on enduring questions. Her academic work focused on Plato’s Gorgias and the question, “How do we agreeably disagree?” She also holds an M.A. in International Relations, with a concentration on the commodification of social norms. Olivia is a published author on issues related to academic freedom, free speech, and how environments can be created to foster agreeable disagreement.

Nicole Ozer is a national leader in cutting-edge law and policy to advance rights, justice, and democracy and a legal expert on artificial intelligence, privacy and surveillance, and digital speech. Prior to becoming the inaugural Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco, Nicole was the founding director and longtime leader of the Technology and Civil Liberties Program at the ACLU of Northern California. Nicole was also a Technology and Human Rights Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, a Berkeley Center for Law and Technology Visiting Researcher, and a Stanford Digital Civil Society Lab Fellow. Nicole is a graduate of Berkeley Law and Amherst College. Nicole’s work was most recently recognized with a California Senate Members Resolution for unwavering dedication to defending and promoting civil liberties in the digital world and meritorious service to humanity.

Siddhu Pachipala is a junior at MIT studying political science and mathematical economics. His work explores how democratic societies sustain civic unity amid deep disagreement, combining American political thought with empirical social science. He has researched whether AI-mediated deliberation can reduce polarization at MIT GOV/LAB and is leading an econometrics project on civic capacity and immigration backlash. He also helps teach first-year seminars in political philosophy and serves as a Debate Fellow through MIT Concourse. Siddhu has worked in public policy at the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and in grassroots fundraising and voter persuasion for the Harris for President campaign. He is a squad leader in Army ROTC and leads re:FOUNDING, a civic-education initiative developing a next-generation high-school civics curriculum. His writing on American politics and civic culture has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, Newsweek, Slate, and other outlets.

Jonathan Peele directs the Coolidge Foundation’s speech and debate program, where he focuses on expanding opportunities that enhance students’ skills in substantive communication, passion for engaged citizenship, and understanding of public policy. Prior to joining the Foundation, Mr. Peele taught and coached speech and debate for more than two decades. With his leadership, his students amassed an impressive collection of awards, including the 2018 NSDA national championship in Congressional Debate – Senate. Alongside his work in schools, he co-founded a profitable educational summer program, the Institute for Speech and Debate, guiding it from startup in 2012 to a successful exit in 2021. Mr. Peele holds a Master of Education degree from UNC-Charlotte and a Bachelor of Political Science degree from UNC-Chapel Hill.

Adam Seagrave is Director of the Teaching American History programs at the Ashbrook Center, a tenured Associate Professor of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, and a curriculum consultant with Fair For All. He received his PhD in political theory from the University of Notre Dame and a BA in Great Books from Thomas Aquinas College (CA), where he transferred after leaving the U.S. Naval Academy at the top of his class. 

John Snoad is Senior Manager at Sphere Education Initiatives where he works to advance Sphere’s professional development training programs and educator engagement. He is a career educator with over 34 years of highly effective teaching in secondary social studies, along with extensive experience coaching high school football. John has taught in urban, suburban, and rural schools, working with learners of all levels. He is passionate about enhancing civic culture and civil discourse across disciplines and supporting educators in empowering student voices. John holds a BS in Education from the University of Toledo and an MS in Educational Administration and Leadership from the University of Dayton. He and his wife reside on southwest Florida.

Casey Spinks is a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Civic Leadership. His research and teaching focus on the foundations of thinking in light of revelation and reason’s fundamental claims. His first book, Kierkegaard’s Ontology, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury. His peer-reviewed work has appeared in Scottish Journal of Theology, Heythrop Journal, and International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, among others. He is also a contributing editor to Front Porch Republic. A native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Spinks earned his B.A. and M.A. in philosophy and religious studies from Louisiana State University, and Ph.D. in religion from Baylor University.

Yael Steiner serves as the Sr. Director of Programs at Civic Spirit, leading experiential civic learning initiatives for students at faith-based schools across the country. Previously, she worked at Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools and RAVSAK, running leadership development, community engagement, and educational programs for Jewish day school leaders, teachers, and students. She has also taught at SAR Academy and Beit Rabban Day School. Yael earned a BA and social studies teaching certification from the University of Michigan and a dual MA in Education and Jewish Studies from NYU, where she studied as a Jim Joseph and Wexner-Davidson graduate fellow.