Christopher Tollefsen, Interim Executive Director 

Christopher Tollefsen is a professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina. He has published over 125 articles in journals and edited collections, and a similar number of popular essays in venues such as Public Discourse, First Things, and National Review.  

He is the author of several books, including Lying and Christian Ethics and the forthcoming Killing and Christian Ethics (both with Cambridge University Press); and the co-author of The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession (with Dr. Farr Curlin) and Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (with Robert P. George).  He is the editor of several collections, including John Paul II’s Contribution to Catholic Bioethics and Artificial Nutrition and Hydration: The New Catholic Debate. 

In 2019-20, he served as a commissioner on the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights. He has twice been a visiting fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University, and in 2024-25 was a visiting fellow at the DeNicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame. 

Cornel West, Union Theological Seminary 

Cornel West is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. He teaches on the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as well as courses in philosophy of religion, African American critical thought and a wide range of subjects.  

His numerous books include his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His most recent book, Black Prophetic Fire, offers an unflinching look at nineteenth and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies.  

Robert P. George, Princeton University 

Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He was chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, the United States Commission on Civil Rights, and UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. He is a former Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award.  

Julia Mahoney, University of Virginia 

Julia D. Mahoney is the John S. Battle Professor and Joseph C. Carter Jr. Research Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she teaches courses in property, constitutional law, government finance and nonprofit organizations. Her research interests include eminent domain, the delegation of government power to private entities and freedom of thought in higher education. 

Mahoney is an elected member of the American Law Institute and serves as an adviser to the Restatement of Property. She is also a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance. 

Paul Carrese, Arizona State University 

Paul Carrese is a professor in the School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, where he was the founding director from 2016 to 2023. For two decades taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he co-founding its honors program blending liberal arts and leadership education. He teaches and publishes on the American founding, American constitutional and political thought, civic education, and American grand strategy. His forthcoming book is Teaching America: Reflective Patriotism in Schools, College, and Culture (Cambridge, 2026).  

Mary Keys, University of Notre Dame 

Mary M. Keys is a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. Her research and teaching interests span a broad spectrum of political theory, with a special focus in Christianity, ethics, and political thought. She is the author of Pride, Politics, and Humility in Augustine's City of God (Cambridge) and Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good (Cambridge). She has held various fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship supporting her ongoing research project on mumility, modernity and the science of politics.