Online Summer SeminarsGreat Books. Big questions.

Christopher Utter is a professorial lecturer in the Department of Government in the School of Public Affairs at American University. He has taught courses in the history of political philosophy, classical political philosophy, American political thought, American politics, and public affairs. His research focuses mainly on classical political philosophy with a particular interest in the problem of theory and practice in Plato and Aristotle.

Mary Elizabeth Halper is Dean of the Humanities at Hertog program and a tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis. Previously, she was Associate Director of the Hertog Foundation. She graduated with B.A.s in Philosophy and Classics from the University of Dallas and has since been devoted to liberal education in various forms.

John Harpham is a Lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard University. He is an historian of political thought and an intellectual historian. His research examines ideas about slavery, freedom, and race, as well as the relation of such ideas to practices of enslavement and resistance across the Atlantic world. He is at work on a three-volume series about the ideas that were associated with the origins, development, and eventual abolition of slavery in the Anglo-American Atlantic world. The first volume, The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery, is currently available from Harvard University Press.

Shilo Brooks is Executive Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and Lecturer in the Department of Politics. He is author of Nietzsche’s Culture War, in addition to scholarly and journalistic articles on a variety of topics in politics and the humanities. His teaching and research interests lie in the history of political philosophy, politics and literature, and statesmanship.

Daniel Burns is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas. His research in political philosophy focuses on the relation between religion and citizenship. He has recently served as a staffer for the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee and as a full-time contractor for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Thomas Chatterton Williams is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Losing My Cool and Self-Portrait in Black and White. He is a Visiting Professor of Humanities and senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, and a visiting fellow at AEI. He was previously a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and a Columnist at Harper’s.

Matthew Continetti is the director of domestic policy studies and the inaugural Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where his work is focused on American political thought and history, with a particular focus on the development of the Republican Party and the American conservative movement in the 20th century.

Tom Cotton is a United States Senator from Arkansas. His committees include the Banking Committee, where he chairs the Economic Policy Subcommittee, the Intelligence Committee, and the Armed Services Committee, where he chairs the Air Land Power Subcommittee. He served nearly five years on active duty in the U.S. Army as an Infantry Officer.

Daniel DiSalvo is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at The City College of New York-CUNY.  His scholarship focuses on American political parties, elections, labor unions, state government, and public policy.

Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, working primarily on the Policing and Public Safety Initiative, and a contributing editor of City Journal. His work on criminal justice, immigration, and social issues has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Tablet, among other publications.

Carrie Filipetti is Executive Director of the Vandenberg Coalition, a network of leaders committed to a strong and proud American foreign policy. Previously she served as deputy assistant secretary for Cuba and Venezuela in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs and the deputy special representative for Venezuela at the U.S. Department of State.

Congresswoman Virginia Foxx represents North Carolina’s 5th District in the United States House of Representatives. She currently serves as the Chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. From 2013 to 2016, she served as Secretary of the House Republican Conference.

Jakub Grygiel is an Associate Professor at the Catholic University of America. From 2017–18, he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. His most recent book is Return of the Barbarians: Confronting Non-State Actors from Ancient Rome to the Present.

Ryan Patrick Hanley is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. His research in the history of political philosophy focuses on the Enlightenment. He is the author of Our Great Purpose: Adam Smith on Living a Better Life and Love’s Enlightenment: Rethinking Charity in Modernity.

Eliana Johnson is editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon. Prior to joining the Free Beacon, she served as a White House correspondent at POLITICO. She is a regular presence on cable television and has appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation, ABC’s This Week, and the PBS News Hour. She graduated from Yale College with a degree in History.

Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the policy planning staff, as principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and as deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.

Kevin Kambo is an assistant professor of philosophy at The University of Dallas. He specialises in ancient Greek philosophy, particularly Platonic psychology. He also has scholarly interest in philosophy of technology, liberal education, and philosophy and literature.

William Kristol is editor-at-large of The Bulwark and founder of The Weekly Standard. Mr. Kristol has served as chief of staff to the Vice President Dan Quayle and to the Secretary of Education. He hosts Conversations with Bill Kristol, which features in-depth conversations with leading figures in American public life.

Yuval Levin is a Resident Scholar and Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the Editor of National Affairs magazine. Mr. Levin served on the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush.

Lewis “Scooter” Libby is a distinguished fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has held several high level positions in the federal government related to his current work on national security and homeland security affairs. This included roughly a dozen years working in the White House, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of State.

Harvey C. Mansfield is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government at Harvard University. He was Chairman of the Government Department from 1973–1977, has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships, and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center.

Wilfred M. McClay holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College. His book, The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, received the 1995 Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American intellectual history.

Sec. Mike Pompeo served as the 70th United States Secretary of State under President Donald Trump, from 2018 to 2021, following his role as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Sec. Pompeo is a former U.S. Army officer and represented Kansas’s 4th district in Congress from 2011 to 2017.

Reihan Salam is President of the Manhattan Institute.  A second-generation American, he is the author, most recently, of Melting Pot or Civil War? (Sentinel, 2018) and, before that, the co-author, with Ross Douthat, of Grand New Party (Doubleday, 2008).

Mark L. Rienzi is President and CEO of Becket, a nonprofit, nonpartisan religious liberties law firm dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious faiths. He is also a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, where he is co-director of the Center for Religious Liberty, and has served as a Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He teaches constitutional law, religious liberty, and evidence, and has been voted Teacher of the Year three times by the Law School’s Student Bar Association.

Diana J. Schaub is Professor of Political Science at Loyola University Maryland and a member of the Hoover Institution’s task force on The Virtues of a Free Society. From 2004 to 2009 she was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.

Jenna Silber Storey is a senior fellow in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies department at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the co-author of a book with Benjamin Storey: Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment.

Benjamin Storey is a senior fellow in Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He recently co-authored a book with Jenna Silber Storey entitled Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment.

Flagg Taylor is an Associate Professor of Government at Skidmore College, and serves on the Academic Council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He is editor most recently of The Long Night of the Watchman: Essays by Václav Benda, 1977–1989. He is currently writing a book on Czech dissent in the 1970s and 1980s and hosts The Enduring Interest podcast.

Steven Teles is Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and Professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins University. At Niskanen, Teles provides intellectual input into the full range of the Center’s research, as well as contributing to its Revitalizing Liberalism Initiative.

Roger Zakheim serves as the Washington Director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. He previously practiced law at Covington & Burling LLP where he led the firm’s Public Policy and Government Affairs practice group. Before joining Covington he was General Counsel and Deputy Staff Director of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee. In this role, Mr. Zakheim managed the passage of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, the defense policy bill which authorizes the Defense Department’s budget. Mr. Zakheim’s government experience also includes serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense where he supported the department’s policies and programs related to Iraq and Afghanistan coalition affairs.

Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.

Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Professor of Political Science and Concurrent Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame.

Gary J. Schmitt is a senior fellow in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies program at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies issues related to the American presidency, the U.S. constitution and its principles, and American civic life.

Richard Brookhiser is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, a senior editor of National Review, and a columnist for American History. His books include John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court, Founders’ Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln (Basic Books, 2014), and several other books on revolutionary America. He is author and host of two films for PBS by Michael Pack: Rediscovering George Washington (2002) and Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton (2011). In 2008 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal.

Michael Fragoso is Chief Counsel in the Office of the Senate Republican Minority Leader. Previously, he served as Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mike is a graduate of Notre Dame Law School. Prior to law school he worked in Washington, DC, on bioethics and pro-life issues.

Jeffrey K. Tulis is Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin. His book, The Rhetorical Presidency, has been described as “one of the two or three most important and perceptive works written by a political scientist in the twentieth century.” In 2017 it was chosen for the Princeton Classics collection of affordable new editions of “some of the most important and influential books ever published by Princeton University Press—works by leading scholars and writers that have made a lasting impact on intellectual life around the world.” It received the American Political Science Association’s Legacy Award in 2018.

Judge Amul Thapar serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.  His judicial career began in 2007 when President George W. Bush nominated him to serve on the Eastern District of Kentucky, making him the first South Asian Article III judge in American history.

Keith E. Whittington is the David Boies Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He serves as Founding Chair of the Academic Freedom Alliance’s Academic Committee and as a Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow. He has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, an American Council of Learned Societies Junior Faculty Fellow, a National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement Fellow, and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center.

Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky is a presidential historian and the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library. She is the author of the award-winning book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, and regularly writes for public audiences in the Wall Street Journal, Ms. Magazine, The Daily Beast, The Bulwark, Time Magazine, USA Today, CNN, and the Washington Post.

Justin Driver is the Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He teaches and writes on constitutional law and is the author of The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind. He has written extensively for general audiences, including pieces in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. In 2021, President Biden appointed Driver to serve on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. In 2024, President Biden appointed him to serve on the U.S. Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise.

Aaron MacLean is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and the host of the School of War podcast. Previously, he was senior foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Aaron served on active duty as a U.S. Marine for seven years, deploying to Afghanistan as an infantry officer in 2009–2010.

Dan Blumenthal is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. Mr. Blumenthal has served in and advised the US government on China issues for more than a decade.

Mike Gallagher served for four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives as Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District representative. Previously, he served seven years on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps, including two deployments to Iraq. 

Gen. Kenneth ‘Frank’ McKenzie Jr. is the former Commander of United States Central Command. He led a distinguished 42-year military career, commanding at multiple levels within the Marine Corps and serving on the Joint Staff. His leadership roles included commanding the First Battalion, Sixth Marines, and the 22nd MEU (SOC) during combat deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Vance Serchuk is Executive Director of the KKR Global Institute and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Prior to joining KKR, Mr. Serchuk served for six years as the senior national security advisor to Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut).

Elliott Abrams is the chairman of Tikvah, as well as chairman of the Vandenberg Coalition and senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. He served as special assistant to the president and NSC senior director for the Near East and North Africa in the first term of George W. Bush, and as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the second term.

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Dr. Hanson was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1992–93), a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University (1991–92), the annual Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Visiting Fellow in History at Hillsdale College (2004–), the Visiting Shifron Professor of Military History at the US Naval Academy (2002–3),and the William Simon Visiting Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University (2010). He is the author of hundreds of articles, book reviews, and newspaper editorials on Greek, agrarian, and military history and essays on contemporary culture.

Jacqueline Deal is co-founder of the American Academy for Strategic Education (AASE), which teaches courses on net assessment, China, and political warfare to early and mid-career national security professionals, and president of the Long Term Strategy Group, which uses open sources to improve the US government’s understanding of our foreign rivals’ ambitions and weaknesses.

Rush Doshi is a senior fellow for China and Indo-Pacific studies and director of the initiative on China strategy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). His expertise includes China’s foreign policy, U.S. strategy toward China, cross-strait issues, and Indo-Pacific security. Before joining CFR, Doshi was deputy senior director for China and Taiwan on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council (NSC), where he served from 2021 to 2024 and helped manage the NSC’s first China directorate.

Matthew Kroenig is a Professor in the Department of Government and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. A 2019 study in Perspectives on Politics ranked him as one of the top 25 most-cited political scientists of his generation. He has served in several positions in the U.S. Department of Defense and the intelligence community in the Bush and Obama administrations.

Andrew May is the Associate Director of the Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense. In this role he is primarily responsible for direction and oversight of ONA’s research program, as well as the design and conduct of net assessments. His principal areas of focus include the nature and scope of future net assessments, the character of the future security environment, and the development of defense strategies for the long-term competition.

Frederick W. Kagan is a Senior Instructor with the Hertog War Studies Program at the Institute for the Study of War. The author of the 2007 report “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq,” he is one of the intellectual architects of the successful “surge” strategy in Iraq. He is the Director of AEI’s Critical Threats Project.

Kimberly Kagan is a Senior Instructor with the Hertog War Studies Program and founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War. She is a military historian who has taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Yale, Georgetown, and American University.

LTG James M. Dubik (U.S. Army, Ret.) is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Study of War and a Professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program. General Dubik has extensive operational experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Bosnia, Haiti, Panama, and in many NATO countries.

John R. Allen is a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general. Previously, he was commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense on Middle East security, and special presidential envoy to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL.

General Scaparrotti assumed duties as Commander of European Command and as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe in late spring of 2016. He ad previously been assigned as the Commander, United Nations Command / Combined Forces Command / United States Forces Korea. He also served as the Director, Joint Staff. His awards and decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, and the Army Meritorious Service Medal. He has earned the Combat Action Badge, Expert Infantryman Badge, Master Parachutist Badge, and Ranger Tab.

Brian Babcock-Lumish is the Recanati-Kaplan Chair and Director of the General David H. Petraeus Center for Emerging Leaders at the Institute for the Study of War. Prior to joining the Institute, he served as a US Army military intelligence officer, retiring after 24 years in uniform. Dr. Babcock-Lumish twice deployed as a part of Multi-National Force-Iraq, first leading a team training Iraqi intelligence collectors, and later serving for a year as a strategic intelligence analyst and General Petraeus’ daily intelligence briefer during “The Surge” in 2007. During his assignment at U.S. Army Pacific, he served as General Vincent Brooks’ analysis chief leading 200 analysts watching the 36 countries of the Indo-Pacific, and as a strategic planner in General Robert Brown’s commander’s action group.

Admiral Chris Grady, a native of Newport, Rhode Island and a graduate of The University of Notre Dame, is the twelfth Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this capacity, he is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Nation’s second highest-ranking military officer.

Gen. McChrystal is the former commander of US and International Security Assistance Forces Afghanistan and the nation’s premier military counter-terrorism force, Joint Special Operations Command. He is best known for developing and implementing a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, and for creating a cohesive counter-terrorism organization that revolutionized the interagency operating culture.

H. R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.  Previously, he served as the 26th assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and as a commissioned officer in the United States Army for 34 years before retiring as a Lieutenant General. He is author of Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World.

Michael K. Nagata is a Senior Vice President and Strategic Advisor for CACI International, and also owns and operates Hanada Bridge LLC, a national security and counterterrorism consulting firm.  Retiring from the US Army in 2019 after 38 years of active duty in the US Army, with 34 years in US Special Operations, his final assignment was Director of Strategic Operational Planning for the National Counterterrorism Center.

General (Ret) David H. Petraeus is Chairman of the KKR Global Institute. Prior to joining KKR, Gen. Petraeus served over 37 years in the U.S. military, culminating his career with six consecutive commands, five of which were in combat, including command of coalition forces during the Surge in Iraq, command of U.S. Central Command, and command of coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Mick Ryan is a retired major general in the Australian Army. He is now an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, and a non-resident fellow of the Lowy Institute in Sydney. In January 2023 Mick was also appointed as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

Matthew Dinan is an Associate Professor in the Great Books Program at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He does research on Ancient Greek, Christian, and 19th and 20th Century Political Philosophy.