George Washington Forum News and Events

Roger Scruton (University of St Andrews)

Roger Scruton, FBA, FSL, is a professor of philosophy at the University of St. Andrews and a fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. For twenty years, he was a professor of aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London, and he also held positions at Cambridge and Oxford. In 2010, he gave the Gifford Lectures in St. Andrews, while in 2011 he gave the Stanton Lectures in the Divinity School at the University of Cambridge. The author of more than thirty books, he has published recently The Soul of the World (Princeton, 2014), The Face of God (Continuum, 2012), The Uses of Pessimism (Oxford, 2009) and Beauty (Oxford, 2010).

Steven D. Smith (University of San Diego School of Law)

Steven D. Smith is Warren Distinguished Professor Law at the University of San Diego School of Law, where he also is the co-executive director of USD’s Institute for Law and Religion and Institute for Law and Philosophy. He earned his J.D. from Yale University after doing his undergraduate work at Brigham Young. Before moving to USD in 2002, he was was the Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame Law School and was the Byron R. White Professor of Law at the University of Colorado School of Law. Smith’s books include The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse (Harvard , 2010); Law’s Quandary (Harvard, 2004); and Foreordained Failure: The Quest for a Constitutional Principle of Religious Freedom (Oxford, 1995). His latest book is The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom (Harvard University Press, 2014).

Daniel DiSalvo (City College of New York) and Richard Kahlenberg (The Century Foundation)

Daniel DiSalvo is Associate Professor of Political Science at The City College of New York–CUNY and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership. A graduate of the University of Virginia, he is the author of Engines of Change: Party Factions in American Politics, 1868–2010 and, most recently, Government Against Itself: Public Union Power and its Consequences. He has also contributed pieces to National Affairs, the Weekly Standard, the New York Daily News and the New York Post.

Richard D. Kahlenberg is Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation. Formerly a legislative assistant to Senator Charles S. Robb (D-VA), he is the winner of the William A. Kaplin Award for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy Scholarship. A graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he is a prolific scholar, having written six books and numerous articles. Among his most recent works are A Smarter Charter: Finding What Works for Charter Schools and Public Education (2014); Why Labor Should Be a Civil Right: Rebuliding a Middle-Class Democracy by Enhancing Worker Voice; and Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles over Schools, Unions, Race and Democracy.

KC Johnson (City University of New York Graduate Center & Brooklyn College)

KC Johnson is Professor of History at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. He did his B.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard, and his M.A. at the University of Chicago. Before coming to Brooklyn College, he taught at Arizona State and Williams College and has served as a visiting professor at Harvard University and at Tel Aviv University, as Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities. He is the author of four books on American politics and foreign relations, including Congress and the Cold War (Cambridge, 2006) and “All the Way with LBJ”: The 1964 Presidential Election (Cambridge, 2009). In addition, he co-authored, with Stuart Taylor, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices in the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case (New York, 2007) and has blogs regularly on academic matters, including on campus sexual conduct policies, at Minding the Campus.

Robert P. George (Princeton University)

Robert P. George is McCormick Chair of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and the founding director of the James Madison Program on American Ideals and Institutions. Having taught at Princeton since 1985, he has held visiting positions at Oxford University and Harvard Law School. A graduate of Swarthmore College, he earned his D.Phil. from Oxford University, his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and his M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School. He is vice-chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and has served on the President’s Council on Bioethics and as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. George has published widely on constitutional interpretation and the natural law, and his books include Conjugal Union: What Marriage is and Why It Matters (Cambridge University Press, 2014), co-authored with Patrick Lee, and Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (Doubleday, 2008), co-authored with Christopher Tollefsen.