Dr. William Galston holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program. A former policy advisor to President Clinton and presidential candidates, Galston is an expert on domestic policy, political campaigns, and elections. His current research focuses on designing a new social contract and the implications of political polarization.

Dr. Galston is the author of eight books and more than 100 articles in the fields of political theory, public policy, and American politics.  His books include The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (2004), and Public Matters (2005).  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. Additionally, Dr. Galston is a frequent commentator on NPR and writes a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal.

Karlyn Bowman is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where she compiles and analyzes American public opinion using available polling data on a variety of subjects, including the economy, taxes, the state of workers in America, environment and global warming, attitudes about homosexuality and gay marriage, NAFTA and free trade, the war in Iraq, and women’s attitudes. In addition, Ms. Bowman has studied and spoken about the evolution of American politics due to key demographic and geographic changes. She has often lectured on the role of think tanks in the United States and writes a weekly column for Forbes.com. She was the managing editor of Public Opinion from 1979 to 1990 and the founding editor of The American Enterprise from 1990 to 1995.

Kenneth L. Woodward is a scholar as well as one of the nation’s most respected journalists. He served as Newsweek’s religion editor for nearly forty nears, reporting from five continents and contributing more than seven hundred articles, including nearly one hundred cover stories, on a wide range of social issues and ideas. His work has also appeared in other magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals. He is the author of Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn’t, and Why (1990), The Book of Miracles: The Meaning of the Miracle Stories in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam (2000), and Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama (2016).

Dr. Grant Wacker is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke Divinity School. He specializes in the history of Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, World Missions and American Protestant thought. Winner of two distinguished teaching awards, Dr. Wacker has authored more than thirty journal articles and book chapters, more than one hundred book reviews, op-eds and essays in magazines and newspapers.  He is also the author of seven books, including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (2001) and America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (2014). From 1997 to 2004, Dr. Wacker served as a senior editor of the quarterly journal, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture. He is past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and of the American Society of Church History, and a trustee of Fuller Theological Seminary.

Cathleen Kaveny is the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor at Boston College where she teaches in both the Theology Department and the Law School. She has published over a hundred articles and essays, in journals and books specializing in law, ethics, and medical ethics. She serves on the masthead of Commonweal as a regular columnist. Her first book, Law’s Virtues: Fostering Autonomy and Solidarity in American Society, published in 2012 by Georgetown University Press won a first place award in the category of “Faithful Citizenship” from the Catholic Press Association. Her latest book, Prophecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square, was published in March 2016.

Professor Kaveny is the president of the Society of Christian Ethics, the major professional society for scholars of Christian ethics and moral theology in North America, and has served on a number of editorial boards including The American Journal of Jurisprudence, The Journal of Religious Ethics, the Journal of Law and Religion, and The Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics.

Mark Stricherz is an award-winning, Capitol Hill political reporter at Congressional Quarterly and Roll Call. He earned a B.A. in political science from Santa Clara University and an M.A. in social sciences from the University of Chicago. After working in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps to redevelop an inner-city neighborhood in Baton Rouge, he became a newspaper reporter. His articles have appeared in many national publications, including the Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, the New Republic, and Christianity Today. He is the author of Why the Democrats are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the decline of the People’s Party (2007).