George Washington Forum News and Events

Matthew B. Crawford (University of Virginia)

Matthew Crawford is a senior fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He earned his BA in physics from UC-Santa Barbara and his PhD in political philosophy from the University of Chicago. He has published articles on ancient Greek philosophy, neuroscience and the philosophy of science and has written regularly for The New Atlantis. His books include Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (Penguin, 2009) and The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015).

Christina Hoff Sommers (American Enterprise Institute)

Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former professor of philosophy at Clark University. She is the author of Right and Wrong: Basic Readings in Ethics (Harcourt, 1986), Who Stole Feminism? (Touchstone, 1995), The War Against Boys (Touchstone 2001), One Nation Under Therapy (St. Martin’s, 2005), The Science on Women and Science (AEI Press, 2005) and Freedom Feminism (AEI Press, 2013). Her articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, National Review, The Economist and the New Republic. This event is co-sponsored by the George Washington Forum, the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute and the Ohio University College Republicans.

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.