Timothy W. Burns

Timothy W. Burns is Professor of Political Science and Graduate Program Director at Baylor University, where he teaches courses in ancient and modern political philosophy, Shakespeare’s politics, politics and literature, and the American Founding. He received his BA (Phi Beta Kappa) from Boston College, and his MA and PhD from the University of Toronto, where he studied with Thomas L. Pangle and Clifford Orwin. He has taught at Hiram College, Texas State, Boston College, and Skidmore College, and directed the Skidmore in Paris program and the Baylor in St. Andrews program (Scotland). He is editor in chief of Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, series co-editor (with Thomas L. Pangle) of Palgrave MacMillan’s Recovering Political Philosophy, an advisory board member of Lexington Books’ Politics, Literature, and Film series, and the Northeast Chair of the Society for Greek Political Thought.

Dr. Burns is author of Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), co-author (with Thomas L. Pangle) of Key Texts of Political Philosophy: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2014), editor of After History? Francis Fukuyama and his Critics (Rowman and Littlefield, 1994), editor of Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle (Lexington, 2010), editor of Brill’s Companion to Leo Strauss’ Writings on Classical Political Thought (Brill, 2015), co-editor (with Peter Lawler) of The Future of Liberal Education (Routledge, 2014), and co-editor (with Bryan-Paul Frost) of Philosophy, History, and Tyranny: Re-examining the Debate Between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève (SUNY Press, 2016).  He is translator of Marcellinus’ “Life of Thucydides,” author of essays on Homer, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Aristophanes, Augustine, Shakespeare, Bacon, Hobbes, Turgot and the Federalists, Nietzsche, John Courtney Murray, Chesterton, Leo Strauss, Martin Luther King, Jr., Francis Fukuyama, Robert Putnam, modern republicanism, liberal education, and the world state, and the author of numerous book reviews. He is currently working on a book on Xenophon’s Cyropaedia.

Dr. Burns has been a John M. Olin postdoctoral fellow, a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Constitutional Government at Harvard University, a Salvatori Institute Fellow, and an ISI Richard M. Weaver Fellow. He is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Bradley Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Jack Miller Center, the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, the Morton Seminar Foundation, and the Charles Koch Foundation. He has given invited lectures at Thomas More College, Washington and Lee University, Augusta State University, University of Texas at Austin, Union College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Dallas, Hiram College, Michigan State University, St. Mary’s College of St. Andrews University (Scotland), Queens College (NY), Christopher Newport University, Morehead State University, Boston College, Lee University, Renmin University (Beijing, China), Zhejiang University (Hangzhaou, China), East China Normal University (Shanghai, China), and Ashland University. He is a faculty member of the Hudson Political Studies Summer Institute (Washington, DC).

Tim and his wife Ilsa are the parents of Daniel and David Burns. They live in Waco, Texas.

H. Lee Cheek, Jr.

H. Lee Cheek, Jr., is Professor of Political Science and Religion at the University of North Georgia. He received his bachelor’s degree from Western Carolina University, his M.Div. from Duke University, his M.P.A. from Western Carolina University, and his Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America. He previously served as Dean of the School of Social Sciences at Gainesville State College (University of North Georgia), as Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at Athens State University in Alabama, and as Vice-President for College Advancement and Professor of Political Science at Brewton-Parker College in Mt. Vernon, Georgia. Dr. Cheek taught at Brewton-Parker College from 1997-2000, and from 2005-2009. In 2000, 2006, and 2007, the student body of Brewton-Parker College selected Cheek as Professor of the Year; and, in 2008, the Jordon Excellence in Teaching was bestowed upon him by the College’s faculty and administration. From 2000 to 2005, Dr. Cheek served as Associate Professor of Political Science at Lee University. In 2002, Dr. Cheek was given Lee University’s Excellence in Scholarship award; and in 2004, he received Lee University’s Excellence in Advising award. In 2008, Western Carolina University presented Dr. Cheek with the University’s Distinguished Alumni Award for Academic and Professional Achievement.

He has also been a congressional aide and a political consultant. Dr. Cheek’s books include Political Philosophy and Cultural Renewal (Transaction/Rutgers, 2001, with Kathy B. Cheek); Calhoun and Popular Rule, published by the University of Missouri Press (2001; paper edition, 2004); Calhoun: Selected Speeches and Writings (Regnery, 2003); Order and Legitimacy (Transaction/Rutgers, 2004); an edition of Calhoun’s A Disquisition on Government (St. Augustine’s, 2007); a critical edition of W. H. Mallock’s The Limits of Pure Democracy (Transaction/Rutgers, 2007); a monograph on Wesleyan theology (Wesley Studies Society, 2010; reprinted, 2012); and an edition of the classic study, A Theory of Public Opinion (Transaction/Rutgers, 2011). He has also published dozens of scholarly articles in academic publications, and is a regular commentator on American politics and religion. Dr. Cheek’s current research includes completing an intellectual biography of Francis Graham Wilson (I.S.I. Books), a study of the American Founding (Continuum Books), and a book on Patrick Henry’s constitutionalism and political theory. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Humanitas, The Political Science Reviewer, Anamnesis, The University Bookman, and as a Fellow of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters (elected). Cheek has been a Fellow of the Wilbur Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Center for Judicial Studies, and the Center for International Media Studies. Dr. Cheek lives in Vidalia, Georgia, with his wife, Kathy B. Cheek, a teacher of ballet and yoga, and their cats, Sophie and Mr. Macavity.

Theodore J. Eismeier

Theodore J. Eismeier is Emeritus Professor of Government at Hamilton College, where he has taught since 1978. He graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College and received his Ph.D. with Distinction from Yale University. A recipient of the Class of 1962 Outstanding Teacher Award, he teaches courses in American political institutions and public policy and regularly directs the Hamilton College Semester in Washington Program. He is the editor with Douglas W. Rae of Public Policy and Public Choice (Sage, 1979). He is the author, with Philip H. Pollock, of Business, Money, and the Rise of Corporate PACs in American Politics (Quorum Books, 1988), and has published widely in professional journals on the subject of campaign finance. He is currently working on a project on the Hudson River and the Politics of Place. He resides in Clinton and Poughkeepsie with his wife Betsy.

Joseph R. Fornieri

Joseph R. Fornieri is Professor of Political Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Rochester, New York, where he teaches American politics, political philosophy, and constitutional rights and liberties. He is the author of Abraham Lincoln’s Political Faith (2005), an acclaimed scholarly work that explores Lincoln’s religion and politics. He is also the author or editor of three other books on Abraham Lincoln’s political thought and statesmanship: The Language of Liberty: The Political Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (2003; revised ed. 2009); (with Kenneth L. Deutsch) Lincoln’s American Dream: Clashing Political Perspectives (2005); and (with Sara V. Gabbard) Lincoln’s America, 1809-1865 (2008). His Abraham Lincoln, Philosopher Statesman will be published in the spring, 2014. In addition, Fornieri has co-edited (with Kenneth L. Deutsch) An Invitation to Political Thought (2009), an introductory text to the classic political thinkers of the Western tradition from Plato to Nietzsche.

Fornieri has won several teaching awards at RIT, including the Provost’s Award for outstanding teaching for junior faculty in 2002 and the Eisenhart Award for outstanding teaching for tenured faculty.  He was a Fulbright Lecturer, 2008-2009 in Prague, Czech Republic where he taught American political thought and First Amendment Law at Charles University.  He lives in Fairport New York with his wife Pam, his two daughters Bella and Natalie, and his two stepchildren J.J. and Helena. On the side, he plays guitar in a blues band.

Eric R. Hannis

Eric R. Hannis is Director of Government Relations at Raytheon Technologies.  He serves as a Senior Fellow for Defense Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.  His previous positions have been on Capitol Hill, in the Pentagon, on active duty military service as a U.S. Air Force officer, and in private sector government relations. His articles on national security and foreign affairs have been featured in, or cited in, U.S. News & World Report, RealClearPolitics.com, Forbes.com, Heritage.org, GX–The Guard Experience (official magazine of the National Guard), among other publications. In the private sector, he was Vice President and head of the defense practice at The Russ Reid Company, a government relations firm, as well as Executive Director at Etherton and Associates, a defense consulting firm.  While at both firms, Hannis represented both small and large defense companies on Capitol Hill, in the Pentagon, as well as in other government agencies.

Hannis currently serves as a Lt Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.  His military awards include the Meritorious Service Medal, the Army Commendation Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, the Air Force Commendation Medal, as well as the German Armed Forces Military Proficiency Badge, gold level.  He graduated with honors from Hamilton College, where he was a member of the Chi Psi Fraternity, and holds a J.D. from Catholic University School of Law with a certificate of specialization in international law.

Ann Hartle

Ann Hartle is Emerita Professor of Philosophy at Emory University where she has taught since 1984. She has her doctorate from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her research is focused on the history of philosophy, especially early modern philosophy, and political philosophy. She is the author of four books: The Modern Self in Rousseau’s “Confessions”: A Reply to St. Augustine (Notre Dame, 1983), Death and the Disinterested Spectator: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Philosophy (SUNY Press, 1986), Self-Knowledge in the Age of Theory (Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), and Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher (Cambridge University Press, 2003).  With Sheila O’Connor Ambrose, she co-edited volume 4 of History and Women, Culture, and Faith: Collected Papers of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Currently she is working on a second book on Montaigne, Montaigne and the Origins of Modern Philosophy. She and her husband are members of St. Joseph’s Maronite Catholic Church in Atlanta.

Janice Hauge

Janice Hauge is Professor, Associate Department Chairperson, and Director of Graduate Admissions, in the Department of Economics at the University of North Texas (UNT), and is a recognized authority on telecommunications policy research. A recipient of UNT’s President’s Council Teaching Award, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in microeconomic theory, industrial organization, and strategic behavior. Hauge began teaching at UNT in 2003. She also publishes research focusing on competition policy and regulation, primarily addressing the telecommunications and broadband industries.  From 2005 to 2009, she worked as a tutor and project supervisor for the Master’s Program in Telecommunication Regulation and Policy at the University of West Indies.  She currently is chairman of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference and has served since 2005 as Senior Research Associate at the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida.

After earning a B.A. degree in American Studies and Economics from Hamilton College in 1989, Hauge earned a Master of Science degree from the London School of Economics in 1991 and her Ph.D. from University of Florida in 2001. While at Hamilton College, she qualified for commission as 2nd Lieutenant in the US Marine Corps.  She was an honor graduate in the leadership training course and graduated first in her class of 1988.

Pamela K. Jensen

Pamela K. Jensen is Emerita Professor of Political Science at Kenyon College, where she has been teaching since 1979. She received her A.B. degree from Kent State University and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She teaches courses in modern political philosophy, the introduction to politics, politics and literature, and African-American political thought.  Her scholarly interests include the philosophy of Montesquieu and Rousseau, Shakespeare, and the writings of African-American thinkers on liberal democracy. She has published essays in several journals and books on these subjects. She is contributing editor of Finding a New Feminism: Rethinking the Woman Question for Liberal Democracy. She was named Harry Clor Professor of Political Science for a five year term, and received the Trustees’ Senior Faculty teaching award at Kenyon in 1998 and the Senior Cup, given by Kenyon’s senior class, in 2000. She also served a two-year term on the national council of the American Political Science Association and a term as president of the Ohio Association of Scholars. She was project director for the We the People Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, awarded to Kenyon College in 2007 to establish the Center for the Study of American Democracy. She has a daughter, Rebecca, and three grandchildren, Col, Lily, and Quinn. She lives in Mount Vernon, Ohio.

Robert P. Kraynak

Robert P. Kraynak is Professor of Political Science at Colgate University, Department Chairman, and Director of The Center for Freedom and Western Civilization. He came to Colgate in 1978 from Harvard University, where he received his Ph. D. in government. He teaches courses in the fields of political philosophy and general education, including courses on American political thought. He received the Colgate Alumni Corporation’s “Distinguished Teaching Award” in 2006. His published books are History and Modernity in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes (Cornell University Press, 1990), Christian Faith and Modern Democracy (Notre Dame University Press, 2001), and In Defense of Human Dignity, edited with Glenn Tinder (Notre Dame University Press, 2003). He is a contributing author to Human Dignity and Bioethics, published by the President’s Council on Bioethics. Kraynak served in the U. S, Army Reserves, is the faculty advisor to the College Republicans at Colgate, and is an active member of St. Mary’s Church in the village of Hamilton, N.Y., where he lives with his wife, Sandra, and their four children.

Daniel J. Mahoney

Daniel J. Mahoney is Augustine Professor of Distinguished Scholarship and Chairman of the Department of Political Science at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he has taught since 1986. He received his Ph.D. from Catholic University in February 1989. His areas of scholarly expertise include statesmanship, religion and politics, French politics and political philosophy, and antitotalitarian thought. His books include The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron (1992, 1998 for the French edition), De Gaulle: Statesmanship, Grandeur, and Modern Democracy (1996, 2000), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent From Ideology (2001, 2008 for the augmented French edition) and Bertrand de Jouvenel: The Conservative Liberal and the Illusions of Modernity (2005). He has also edited or co-edited many books including, most notably, The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005(2006).  Mahoney’s essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in a wide range of public and scholarly journals in the United States and abroad. His writings have also appeared in French, Italian, Portuguese, Hungarian, Norwegian, Czech, and Russian translation. His latest book, The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order: Defending Democracy Against Its Modern Enemies and Immoderate Friends, was published by ISI books in 2011. In 1999, he was the recipient of the Prix Raymond Aron, an award named after the distinguished French political thinker, who renewed Tocqueville’s conservative-minded liberalism and vigorously opposed totalitarianism in all its forms. Mahoney lives in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Claudia Nelson

Claudia Nelson earned her A.B. in history from Bryn Mawr College in 1980 and her Ph.D. in English from Indiana University in 1989. She is Professor of English Emerita at Texas A&M University, where she was until her retirement in 2019 the Claudius M. Easley, Jr. Faculty Fellow in Liberal Arts. Her research focuses on Victorian literature and childhood/family studies. In addition to several edited or co-edited volumes, her publications include Boys Will Be Girls: The Feminine Ethic and British Children’s Fiction, 1857-1917 (Rutgers University Press, 1991); Invisible Men: Fatherhood in Victorian Periodicals, 1850-1910 (University of Georgia Press, 1995); Little Strangers: Portrayals of Adoption in America, 1850-1910 (supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and winner of the Children’s Literature Association’s award for the best scholarly book); Family Ties in Victorian England; Precocious Children and Childish Adults: Age Inversion in Victorian Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012); and Topologies of the Classical World in Children’s Fiction: Palimpsests, Maps, and Fractals (with Anne Morey; Oxford University Press, 2019).

David Nichols

David Nichols is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Baylor University. Before coming to Baylor, he was the Director of the Honors Program at Montclair State University, and has taught at Fordham University, Claremont McKenna College, and served as the Olin Senior Scholar at the University of Virginia. Nichols has also worked as a Program Officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities. His works includeThe Myth of the Modern Presidency (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994) (Arabic translation published 2002); “Constitutional Controversy and Presidential Election: Bush v. Gore” in The Constitutional Presidency, Joseph M. Bessette and Jeffrey K. Tulis, eds. (John Hopkins Press, 2009); and Readings in American Government (ed. with Mary Nichols) (Kendall/Hunt, 8th ed., 2010).  In addition to his work on the presidency, Nichols writes on topics in American political thought, constitutional law, the American presidency, political parties and politics, literature and film.  He and his wife Mary reside in Waco Texas, and have two sons, Keith and John.

Mary Nichols

Mary Nichols is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at Baylor University. Before coming to Baylor in 2004, she taught in the political science department at Fordham University, in the Honors program at the University of Delaware, and as Visiting Professor of Government at Harvard University. She teaches courses in the history of political philosophy, politics, and literature, and politics and film. Her books include Socrates and the Political Community: An Ancient Debate (SUNY Press, 1987); Citizens and Statesmen: A Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics (Rowman & Littlefield, 1992). Her book, Socrates on Friendship and Community:  Reflections on Plato’s Symposium, Phaedrus, and Lysis (Cambridge University Press, 2009). She and David Nichols co-edit Readings in American Government (Kendall/Hunt, 8th ed., 2010). She serves on the editorial boards of the Review of Politics and Perspectives on Political Science.  She is also director of the project, “Contemporary Media and the Great Books: A New Approach to the Classics,” a curriculum package that studies seminal texts in Western thought in conjunction with classical and contemporary American films. She and her husband David have two sons, Keith and John.

Juliana Geran Pilon 

Juliana Geran Pilon earned her PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago. Her latest book is The Utopian Conceit and the War on Freedom (2019). She is the author of The Art of Peace: Engaging a Complex World, published by Transaction in 2016, which  also released, in 2013, a new edition of her autobiographical book, Notes From the Other Side of Night, and Soulmates: Resurrecting Eve, in 2011. Other books include: the anthology Cultural Intelligence for Winning the Peace (2009), Why America is Such a Hard Sell: Beyond Pride and Prejudice (2007), the anthology Every Vote Counts: The Role of Elections in Building Democracy, which she co-edited with Richard Soudriette (2007), and The Bloody Flag: Post-Communist Nationalism in Eastern Europe — Spotlight on Romania (1991). Her anthology on civic education, Ironic Points of Light, was published in Estonian and Russian in 1998. She has also helped write and edit a textbook on civic education used, in country-specific versions, throughout Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, endorsed by the Departments of Education in those countries. Over the years she has published more than two hundred articles and reviews on international affairs, human rights, literature, and philosophy and has made frequent appearances on radio and television. Dr. Pilon has taught at several colleges and universities including the National Defense University, Air University’s Language and Culture Center, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, American University, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Institute of World Politics, where she was director of the Center for Culture and Security. In 2014, she helped found the Daniel Morgan Academy. From 2010 to 2013, she directed the Center for Culture and Security at the Institute of World Politics, Washington, D.C. During the 1990s, she was first director and later vice president for programs at IFES (The International Foundation for Election Systems), where she designed and managed a wide variety of democratization-related projects. She has held post-doctoral fellowships in international relations at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and at the Institute of Humane Studies. During the 1980s she was Senior Policy Analyst in United Nations Studies at the Heritage Foundation.

Alexander T. Riley

Alexander T. Riley is Professor of Sociology at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. He earned his Ph. D. from the University of California, San Diego, where he wrote a thesis that examined secularism and religion in the work and lives of the founders of French sociology.  As a graduate student, he was the recipient of a Chateaubriand Research Fellowship in Social Sciences in 1996-97, awarded by the French Embassy to the United States, Mission Scientifique et Technologique.  In 2013-14, he received a Fulbright Scholar Award from the Council for International Exchange of Scholars and the Franco-American Commission to do archival research in France related to the biographies and work of a group of 20th century French intellectuals including Michel Leiris and Roger Caillois.

At Bucknell, Professor Riley teaches a wide range of courses, including sociological theory; evolutionary theory in the social sciences; religion; the sociology of knowledge, science, and intellectuals; the mind and self in social and evolutionary context; the sociology of the arts and creativity; death in human culture and society; the 1960s; the history of conservative thought; and American society and culture. His books include Godless Intellectuals?:  The Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred Reinvented  (Berghahn, 2010) and The Social Thought of Émile Durkheim (SAGE, 2014), both on the history and interpretation of French social thought; Impure Play:  Sacredness, Transgression, and the Tragic in Popular Culture (Lexington, 2010), on transgression in American popular culture; Angel Patriots: The Crash of United Flight 93 and the Myth of America (New York University Press, 2015), on the collective memory of 9/11; and Toward a Biosocial Science: Evolutionary Theory, Human Nature, and Social Life (Routledge, 2021), on evolutionary theory in the social sciences.

As a graduate student, Riley co-edited with the late Philippe Besnard, Un ethnologue dans les tranchées: août 1914-avril 1915: lettres de Robert Hertz à sa femme Alice (Éditions CNRS,  2002), a selection of letters written from the front during WWI by the French philosopher/sociologist Robert Hertz, who was killed in action in April 1915.  He has translated works in the French social sciences, Saints, Heroes, Myths, and Rites:  Classical Durkheimian Studies of Religion and Society (Paradigm, 2009) and co-edited with W. Watts Miller and the late W.S.F. Pickering Durkheim, the Durkheimians and Art (Berghahn, 2013), a collection of essays on art and French social science.  Recently, he co-edited with Alf Siewers The Totalitarian Legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution  (Lexington, 2019), a book based on a symposium on the legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution, and edited Reflecting on the 1960s at 50: A Concise Account of How the 1960s Changed America, for Better and for Worse (Routledge, 2020), a book based on a series of public interviews he did with scholars on the consequences of the 1960s in America.

Michael Rizzo

Michael Rizzo is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester.  He majored in economics at Amherst College, where he was graduated magna cum laude in 1996. After graduation he worked for several years as an investment banker at Putnam, Lovell and Thornton (PLT) in New York City. He received graduate degrees in economics at Cornell University, an M. A. in 2002 and Ph.D. in 2004. Professor Rizzo’s fields of specialization include the economics of education, labor economics, applied econometrics, and environmental economics. He also serves as a faculty research associate with the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute and as a consultant with Scannell & Kurz, Inc., an enrollment management firm based in Rochester, NY.

Professor Rizzo is working on two books:  one on economic aphorisms and another on the economic, logical, and moral inconsistencies inherent in some of our most deeply held beliefs.  His also specializes in teaching basic economics to non-academic audiences. He has published articles on economics in a wide variety of newspapers and has appeared on Fox News and many other national media outlets. Professor Rizzo maintains a blog, “The Unbroken Window,” designed as an educational resource to elevate public literacy in economics. Professor Rizzo lives with his wife Rachel, their daughter Amelia and son Isaac, and their two Boston Terriers in Bushnell’s Basin, NY.