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 is Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University and President of the Teagle Foundation.

His most recent book, The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul (2018), was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf prize for “books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and human diversity,” the Lionel Trilling Award, 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 Melville: His World and Work (Knopf, 2005), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times book award in biography, and College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be (Princeton University Press, 2012; 2d edition 2023), which has been translated into several languages. He writes regularly for The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and other periodicals on topics ranging from American literature and history to issues in higher education. 

Mr. Delbanco earned his A.B., A.M., and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. In 2001 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and named “America’s Best Social Critic” by Time Magazine.  In 2006 he was honored with the Great Teacher Award by the Society of Columbia Graduates. He has served as president of the Society of American Historians and is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society. He holds honorary degrees from Ursinus College, Occidental College, Marlboro College, and Gettysburg College.

In 2012, Mr. Delbanco was awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama. In 2022 he delivered the Jefferson Lecture, “the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.”

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.

Michael Newmuis is leading the City of Philadelphia’s preparations for the 250th anniversary of the United States in 2026, coordinating this work as 2026 Director in the Mayor’s Office in the birthplace of American democracy.

As the nation’s first World Heritage City, Philadelphia is set to welcome millions of visitors for this historic milestone, hosting an extraordinary lineup of events, including the 250th anniversaries of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, groundbreaking exhibitions, citywide festivals, and global spectacles such as the FIFA World Cup, MLB All-Star Weekend, NCAA March Madness, and PGA Tour.

With a career spanning the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, Michael is committed to driving economic growth, empowering communities, and fostering unity through shared experiences.

As the former Head of Impact at Future Standard (formerly known as FS Investments) and Executive Director of the FS Foundation, Michael led civic and philanthropic initiatives for a $100 billion asset management firm, championing programs that expanded access to higher education, financial literacy, and community empowerment. During his tenure at Visit Philadelphia, his team boosted the local economy and elevated the city’s global profile by supporting major events such as the 2015 World Meeting of Families with Pope Francis, the 2016 Democratic National Convention, and the 2017 NFL Draft.

Michael’s civic contributions include serving as Chair of the Advisory Board for City & State PA, Honorary Co-chair of Philadelphia250, and a board member of the Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Fund. He is also an active youth mentor through the KB Foundation.

An alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania, Michael holds a bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science with a focus on Computation and Cognition. His has earned recognition as Philadelphia Business Journal’s “Power 100” and "40 Under 40," and Philadelphia Magazine’s 150 most influential leaders.

Luke Ragland is the Chief Impact Officer for the Daniels Fund, one of the largest private foundations in the Rocky Mountain region. In this role, he shapes the foundation's grantmaking strategy across four states and leads its major external initiatives. Before joining the Daniels Fund, Luke led numerous public policy initiatives, most recently as President & CEO of Ready Colorado — a statewide education advocacy organization focused on expanding school choice. Prior to that, he practiced complex commercial litigation at a Denver law firm.

Luke currently serves on several local and national nonprofit boards. He received his undergraduate degree from Colorado State University and studied law at the University of Colorado. Luke is a fourth-generation Coloradan who grew up working for his family’s logging company in rural southwestern Colorado. He currently lives in Denver with his wife and two daughters.

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.

Dame Louise Richardson is president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, the philanthropic foundation established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911. Previously, she served as vice-chancellor (president) of the University of Oxford and of the University of St. Andrews, and as executive dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

A native of Ireland, she studied history in Trinity College Dublin before gaining her PhD at Harvard University, where she spent 20 years on the faculty of the Department of Government, teaching courses on international security and foreign policy. She currently sits on numerous advisory boards, while serving as a trustee of the Booker Prize Foundation, National Theatre in America, and the nonprofit Inter Mediate. Richardson is also a member of the selection committee of the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. In 2023, the Irish government asked Richardson to serve as the independent chair of its Consultative Forum on International Security Policy.

A political scientist by training, Richardson is recognized internationally as an expert on terrorism and counterterrorism. Today considered a seminal work in the field, her groundbreaking study, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (2006), was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as an “overdue and essential primer on terrorism and how to tackle it … the book many have been waiting for.” Other publications include Democracy and Counterterrorism: Lessons from the Past (2007), The Roots of Terrorism (2006), and When Allies Differ: Anglo-American Relations during the Suez and Falklands Crises (1996). She has written numerous articles on international terrorism, British foreign and defense policy, security institutions, and international relations; lectured to public, professional, media, and education groups; and served on editorial boards for several journals and presses.

Richardson’s many awards have recognized the excellence of her teaching and scholarship, including the Centennial Medal bestowed on her in 2013 by Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for “having the vision to assess emerging threats, for transformative leadership, and for moving seamlessly between the roles of scholar and teacher.” She has been awarded 11 honorary doctorates, including from the universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and St. Andrews in Scotland; Trinity College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast in Ireland; the University of Notre Dame and Boston College in the U.S.; the University of the West Indies; Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel; the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in Russia, and Université Grenoble Alpes in France. Richardson is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Academy of Social Sciences in the United Kingdom, as well as an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

In June 2022, Richardson was appointed a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) in recognition of her services to higher education. In 2024, the French government named Richardson a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters for advancing arts and culture and for furthering ties between the U.S. and France.

Rosie Rios is the Chair of America250, the nonpartisan Congressional Commission planning the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. She served as the 43rd Treasurer of the United States and was the CEO of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the U.S. Mint. As Treasurer, she initiated and led the efforts to place a portrait of a woman on U.S. currency for the first time in over a century. Following her eight-year tenure, she was appointed as a Visiting Scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and resumed her role as CEO of Red River Associates, an investment management consulting firm. Rosie served twice on the Treasury/Federal Reserve Transition Teams at the height of the financial crisis in 2008 and again during the pandemic economy of 2020. Prior to her presidential appointment in Treasury, she was Managing Director of Investments for MacFarlane Partners, a $22 billion real estate investment management firm based in San Francisco. Her personal passion includes serving as Founder and CEO of EMPOWERMENT 2026, an initiative that facilitates the physical recognition of historical American women in classrooms and public spaces across the country.  She is a graduate of Harvard University and was selected as the first Latina in Harvard’s 389-year history to have a portrait commissioned in her honor. She was recognized as one of USA Today’s Women of the Century.

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.

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.

Michael Weiser is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Jack Miller Center (JMC). He succeeded JMC’s founder, Jack Miller, in March 2024, and brings a background in investor relations, financial markets, and nonprofit leadership to his role. 

Michael serves as a general partner of Lowell Associates, LP, a private investment partnership, and as chair emeritus of the National Conference on Citizenship, the board of which he led from 2008 to 2016.

As a commentator on issues of finance, civic education and citizenship, Michael’s work has appeared in Institutional Investor, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, and other media. Michael received a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri. A native of Chicago, he resides in Miami with his wife, Julie Greiner Weiser, and served as chair of HistoryMiami Museum from 2016 to 2020.

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.

Benjamin Boyce joined the Hamilton School at the University of Florida in September 2024 as the Director of Civics Outreach and Strategic Partnerships. Benjamin has more than twenty years of experience as a secondary and post-secondary educator. Prior to joining the Hamilton School, Benjamin served as the Teacher Programs Manager for the Jack Miller Center, where he spent three years building a robust teacher support network throughout the southeastern United States. Prior to his work with the JMC, Benjamin spent five years as one of the pioneering faculty at the American University of Iraq—Sulaimaniyah, helping to establish the first liberal-arts university in post-war Iraq. Benjamin Boyce brings a wealth of experience in curriculum development, teacher mentorship, and coalition-building to the Hamilton School.  

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.

Olivia Eve Gross is the Founder and CEO of Studium, a social learning platform that teaches students how to agreeably disagree. Through products like High School Law Review and Middle School Law Review, students engage with constitutional questions, publish their ideas, and learn to debate evidence and opposing viewpoints with clarity, rigor, and respect. Olivia holds a B.A. with honors from the University of Chicago, where she studied Fundamentals: Issues and Texts, a great books program centered on enduring questions. Her work focused on Plato’s Gorgias and the question, “How do we agreeably disagree?” She also holds an M.A. in International Relations and writes on academic freedom, free speech, and learning environments that foster constructive disagreement.

Gross is a member of the Jack Miller Center’s National Civics Council.

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.

Rabbi Charles E. Savenor, the Executive Director of Civic Spirit, has a passion for civic education and its goals of educating, inspiring, and empowering faculty and students towards civic knowledge, responsibility, and attitudes. Before coming to Civic Spirit in 2022, he served as the Director of Congregational Education at Park Avenue Synagogue (PAS) in New York, where he oversaw lifelong learning, inclusion, Israel engagement, and travel education.

Rabbi Savenor graduated from Brandeis University with a B.A., summa cum laude, in History as well as Near Eastern and Judaic Studies in 1991. He received rabbinic ordination, a M.A., and an honorary doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary. He also earned a Masters of Education at Columbia University, Teachers College.

His articles on education, parenting, leadership and Judaism in the 21st century have appeared in The Jerusalem Post, The Jewish Week, The New York Observer, Kveller, Hadassah Magazine, and The Boston Jewish Advocate. Rabbi Savenor blogs for The Times of Israel. He is currently writing a book called What My Father Couldn’t Tell Me.

He currently sits on the international boards of Nefesh B’Nefesh, Leket Israel (the National Food Bank of Israel), JNF’s Adult Education Committee for the World Zionist Village, and the Brandeis University’s Alumni Admissions Council. In June 2021, Rabbi Savenor was the first recipient of “The Maimonides Award for Excellence in Jewish Education” from the Community Scholars Program (CSP).

Rabbi Savenor and his wife, Julie Walpert, are the parents of two sons, Joseph and Benjamin. Fans of the Boston Red Sox, Celtics, and Patriots, they make their home in New York City.

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. 

James V. Shuls, Ph.D., is the Branch Head of Educational Liberty at the Institute for Governance and Civics at Florida State University. A nationally recognized expert on education policy and school choice, Dr. Shuls’ research focuses on K-12 finance, teacher policy, and education reform. He is co-editor of Fighting for the Freedom to Learn: Examining America's Centuries-Old School Choice Movement with Neal McCluskey and the forthcoming edited volume, The Phoenix Principles: Toward a Rebirth of American Education, with Jason Bedrick. Before joining the Institute, Dr. Shuls served as the Department Chair and Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He earned his doctorate in education policy from the University of Arkansas and is a regular speaker on the future of school choice and educational innovation.

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.

Beth Specker is the founding Executive Director of The Rendell Center for Civics and Civic Engagement, where she has worked closely with Judge Marjorie Rendell and former Governor Edward Rendell to establish the organization. In this role, she also serves as chief administrator for The Rendell Center’s Summer Teacher Institutes, overseeing all aspects of the events from program development, to marketing and logistics, as well as financial planning. Ms. Specker was Chief of Staff to First Lady of Pennsylvania, Judge Marjorie Rendell. In that role, she was responsible for oversight of Judge Rendell’s initiative to restore the civic mission of schools, which required her to work with K-12 schools throughout the Commonwealth as well as national organizations such as iCivics, the American Bar Association and the Civic Mission of Schools. Ms. Specker began her career in civics education at the Freedoms Foundation, a national, non-profit organization providing a wide range of educational and awards programs for students, teachers and citizens. During her 19 years there, Ms. Specker oversaw all aspects of running 48 educational conferences each year, including graduate programs for teachers and programs for international students. Ms. Specker holds a bachelor’s degree from Villanova University and a master’s degree in Non-Profit Management from Eastern University. 

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.