Tom Ancona is an Associate Director in the McKeen Center for the Common Good at Bowdoin College where he is responsible for the What Matters dialogue program, the Common Good Grant program, and non-profit summer fellowships funded by the McKeen Center. Through the What Matters programs, Tom has spearheaded conversations on many challenging political and campus topics, brought together students and community members from many different backgrounds, and fostered greater understanding and communication across differences. Tom received his AB and AM from the University of Chicago where he also worked for 9 years. Tom and his family spend most of their spare time exploring Maine’s incredible four-season outdoor activities.

Spencer Baker is a graduate researcher at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, working with leading scholars at the intersection between psychology and religion.  He was trained in interdisciplinary thinking by extensive involvement in intercollegiate debate, and has spoken at conferences on psychology, economics, religion, and politics across the southeast. Spencer currently heads up two research projects exploring how our lives are shaped by deeply held beliefs about the world.

Benjamin Bellet is a Ph.D. candidate in Clinical Science at the Harvard University Department of Psychology.  Prior to graduate school, he served for five years on active duty as a U.S. Army infantry officer.  Benjamin researches how trauma survivors find meaning in life. His published works focus on the impact of the meaning-making process on posttraumatic psychopathology, cultural impacts on posttraumatic resilience, and trauma survivors who repetitively approach reminders of trauma outside of therapeutic contexts.

Leila Brammer is the Executive Director of the Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse at the University of Chicago. Rooted in the Chicago Principles of Freedom of Expression, the Parrhesia Program curricula, programming, and outreach seek to foster the capacity for vigorous, inclusive, and productive discourse in the classroom, campus, and civic life. Leila developed a public discourse program and a civic learning curriculum that received multiple national recognitions, including the American Association of Colleges and Universities Civic Learning in the Major by Design. Her work focuses on embedding discursive practices in classrooms and across campus and communities to support academic and civic inquiry.

Paul Brodwin is a medical anthropologist who studies contemporary mental health services in the United States, the moral worlds of front line clinicians, and reform efforts at the intersection of criminal justice and mental health systems. His past projects focused on the culture of contemporary bioethics as well as global health interventions in rural Haiti. Author and editor of four books, Paul is also the co-editor of a medical anthropology book series at NYU Press, and he occasionally lead workshops about moral distress for psychiatric social workers.

Matt Burgess is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, an Affiliate faculty member in Economics, a Fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, and a Faculty Fellow of the Bruce D. Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization, at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research and teaching focuses on long-run economic growth futures and their environmental and societal implications, reducing political polarization of climate change, and mathematical modeling of human-environment systems. He was the recipient of the 2020 Heterodox Academy Open Inquiry Award for teaching.

Michael Burke is a senior lecturer at Kanda University of International studies and a Ph.D. candidate in War Studies at King’s College London. His research focuses on Critical Social Justice ideology and the threat it poses to the national security of the United Kingdom.

Christine Caldwell Ames is Professor of Medieval European History at the University of South Carolina. A specialist in the history of Christianity, her particular interests are heresy and inquisition, interreligious relations, and meanings of religion in the Middle Ages and today. She has published widely on religious repression, including Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans and Christianity in the Middle Ages (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) and Medieval Heresies: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2015). 

Rob Camp is the Student Leadership Coordinator at Linn-Benton Community College. He teaches Human Development and Career Exploration courses and advises the college’s Student Leadership Council (Associated Student Government).  

Martín Carcasson, Ph.D., is a professor in the Communication Studies department of Colorado State University, the founder and director of the CSU Center for Public Deliberation (CPD), and a faculty member for CSU’s newly minted Masters in Public Policy and Administration program. He also works closely with ICMA and the National Civic League, running workshops on public engagement, and served as the chair of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation’s Board of Directors from 2016-2021.

Robert J. (Rob) Carroll is an assistant professor in the political science department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests cover various topics in international relations, game theory, and political economy. On the teaching side, Rob’s YouTube channel (RobCarrollUIUC) includes over fifty videos covering game theory and strategic international relations. He is very excited for the opportunity to learn from such a wide array of thinkers at this year’s conference.

Emily Chamlee-Wright is the president and CEO of the Institute for Humane Studies. Her scholarly work explores the intersection of economics and culture, and she writes frequently about liberalism, civil discourse, and higher education. As IHS president, Chamlee-Wright led the 2020 launch of the Discourse Initiative, a series of conversations—in-person and written—aimed at drawing scholarly attention back to the broad intellectual tradition of liberalism.

Michelle N. Deutchman is the inaugural executive director of the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement (Center). In this role, she oversees the Center’s operations, programming and research including its multidisciplinary national fellowship program. Deutchman facilitates workshops for staff, students, administrators and law enforcement on First Amendment principles and how to safeguard free speech at universities while simultaneously maintaining a safe and inclusive campus climate.  Her work to study and shape the national discourse on expression and engagement touches all 10 UC campuses as well as higher education institutions across the county.

Jeffery Donaldson teaches poetry and poetics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. His book, Missing Link: the Evolution of Metaphor and the Metaphor of Evolution, was published by McGill-Queens UP in 2015. His seventh volume of poetry entitled Granted: Poems of Metaphor is coming out this fall.  

Allison Ellsworth, Ed.D. (Leadership and Innovation) is a scholarly practitioner whose research focuses on cognitive approaches to teaching first-year composition. She also teaches courses in organizational leadership and interdisciplinary studies. Since 2018, she has served as the composition coordinator at Arizona State University’s Polytechnic Campus.

Jake Fay, Ed.D., is an educator at heart with years of experience teaching and thinking about civic discourse. He was most recently a fellow at the University of California’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement and an Institutional Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, where he headed up the Intercollegiate Civil Disagreement Partnership. He has taught at Bowdoin College, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Harvard College. Jake holds an Ed.D and Ed.M from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an MA in American History from Brandeis University, and is a proud graduate of the Shady Hill Teacher Training Course. He is the co-editor, both with Meira Levinson, of Dilemmas of Educational Ethics: Cases and Commentaries and Democratic Discord in Schools: Cases and Commentaries in Educational Ethics.

Sharon Floyd, Ed.D., MHRD, SHRM – SCP is a seasoned leader and functional expert in the field of human resources and talent management.Before joining the University of Massachusetts Global, Sharon devoted twelve years of her career to the private sector–both in aerospace and defense and financial services–leading large-scale strategic initiatives, to increase employee performance and engagement in the workplace.Sharon desires to help students identify their career aspirations and then prepare them to use their unique gifts and talents for the betterment of themselves, their families, their organizations, and the communities they serve.

Holly Hamilton-Bleakley, Ph.D., is Assistant Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego. Her main area of expertise is late medieval and early modern moral and political philosophy. She has published several articles on late medieval notions of virtue ethics, natural law theory, and moral reasoning. She also works in applied ethics, specifically on questions regarding the ethics of free speech. At USD she teaches a wide variety of subjects, including theoretical and applied ethics, philosophy of religion, ancient philosophy, medieval philosophy, philosophy of law, and philosophy of human nature.

Andrew Hartz is an Adjunct Professor in the clinical psychology Ph.D. program at Long Island University (Brooklyn), a writing fellow at Heterodox Academy, and a psychologist in private practice in New York City. Andrew’s research and writing explores why people frame political issues and racial/gender categories in all-or-nothing terms (e.g., all-good vs. all-bad, all the power vs. powerless, always-victims vs. always-victimizers). He argues that this is driven by an unconscious process called “splitting,” which involves cognitive distortions, emotion dysregulation, interpersonal conflict, and even mental illness. Candidly addressing this dynamic can improve emotion regulation, lead to better understandings of complex issues, improve relationships, and enhance personal fulfillment.

Samantha Hedges, Ph.D. is HxA’s Program Manager. She has a background in K-12 and higher education and public policy advocacy. Prior to joining the HxA team, Samantha was an elementary school teacher for Chicago Public Schools and public policy advocate for child and youth public health programs, early childhood education, and youth after-school programs in Illinois. While pursuing her Ph.D., she studied how evidence is used in policymaking for K-12 education and taught an undergraduate course that prepared aspiring teachers to enter the profession. Samantha earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, a master’s degree in social work, and a doctorate degree in education policy studies.

Deborah Hellman is the David Lurton Massee, Jr. Professor of Law and the F. Palmer Weber Research Professor of Civil Liberties and Human Rights at the University of Virginia School of Law and Director of its Center for Law & Philosophy. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College, holds an M.A. in philosophy from Columbia University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Ashley Hodgson is an economist at St. Olaf College where she serves as department chair and teaches Behavioral Economics, Digital Industries, and Healthcare Economics, among other courses.  She has two YouTube channels, one with her economics lectures and the other looking at social media manipulation, tech monopoly power, and the information crisis. Ashley co-organizes the Heterodox Academy Economist’s Community, which meets virtually once a month.  

Catherine has been teaching composition and creative nonfiction courses in academia for over a decade. She has an MA in Literature from American University and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Portland State University. When she’s not teaching, she is working on a collection of essays, many of which focus on trying to understand our differences in this moment of intense political, social, and economic division. She has written for Oregon Humanities, Portland Monthly Magazine, other online publications, and her essay “A Wholly Different Thing” was just published in Scabland Books’ anthology Evergreen: Fairy Tales, Essays & Fables from the Dark Northwest.

Liz Joyner, a clinical social worker with training in family systems theory, conceptualized The Village Square—what former NEH Chair Jim Leach has since called “a model for the land”—after her experience volunteering in politics convinced her that the way we work out our disagreements in today’s public square is fundamentally flawed. Her organization received a Statewide Impact Award from Leadership Florida and was an inaugural Civvy Award nominee and Liz was profiled in USA Today’s “I am an American” series. A Washington, D.C. native, Liz has enjoyed a lifetime of learning the value respectful disagreement brings to people, problems and relationships—and to a nation that embraces its power—and is stubbornly bound and determined to keep vibrant differences of opinion openly and constructively engaged.

Randell J. Kennedy is president and founder of Academy Communications, a national communications consulting and media-relations agency based in the Boston area and specializing in higher education. Kennedy and his team work closely with colleges and universities across the country providing hands-on media outreach, story development, and effective communications counsel.A recognized expert in university crisis communications, Kennedy is one of the most experienced and longest-serving media consultants in American higher education, and is a well-documented advocate of the power and value of America’s colleges and universities. For more than 30 years, he has helped higher-education leaders, senior campus communicators, faculty experts and others bring their best stories, op-ed writing and institutional achievements to the attention of audiences who matter most. On Twitter: @CampusSources

Ben Klutsey holds dual roles at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. As the Director of Academic Outreach he facilitates outreach to faculty leaders and university centers to foster collaborations and knowledge sharing about building academic programs. Through his role as Director of the Program on Pluralism and Civil Exchange, he works with partner organizations to foster a deeper understanding of pluralism and its role as a core attribute of a liberal society through research and communication; the practice of civil discourse and mutual forbearance; and the development and dissemination of tools for audiences across philosophical divides to model pluralism. He received his MA in International Commerce and Policy from George Mason University and his BA in Government and Philosophy from Lawrence University.

Quentin Langley is Adjunct Faculty at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business. He is also a communications consultant, career coach, journalist and author. He is Moderator of Heterodox Academy’s NYC Community.

Frederic Luskin, Ph.D., is on the faculty for the Executive Education Program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.  He directs the Stanford Forgiveness Projects and co-founded Wellness Education and Life Works at the Stanford School of Medicine. He has a Ph.D. in Counseling and Health Psychology from Stanford University. 

Tim Mahoney is Associate Professor and Department Chair of Educational Foundations at Millersville University in Millersville, PA. Tim began his teaching career as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and was a high school science teacher in urban, rural and international schools.  While Tim thinks of himself as a teacher first, the center of his scholarship is on the development of dispositions in beginning teachers toward inclusive practices. After a Fulbright Fellowship in Poland, Tim expanded his research on disposition development into global education and has begun examining the dispositions of faculty in higher education toward inclusive practices and pedagogies in addition to beginning teachers.

Deb Mashek, Ph.D. is an experienced professor, higher education administrator, and national nonprofit executive. She is the author of the forthcoming book Collabor(h)ate: Build incredible collaborative relationships at work (even if you’d rather work alone). She served as the inaugural Executive Director of Heterodox Academy. Deb serves on the board of BridgeUSA and is a Senior Fellow at Claremont Graduate University. Deb is the founder of Myco Consulting LLC, where she speaks, advises, and provides professional development to those seeking to cultivate collaboration among diverse stakeholders to accomplish ambitious goals.

William Mattox is the director of the Marshall Center for Education Freedom at the James Madison Institute, a state-based think tank in Tallahassee, Florida. Much of his work is devoted to promoting campus free expression and to developing supplemental curricula in  rhetoric, civics, and economic freedom. A long-time board member of the Village Square, Mattox previously served on the Tallahassee Civil Rights Heritage Walk Committee and is currently serving on the Mary McLeod Bethune U.S. Capitol Statue Committee. 

Martha McCaughey is a professor of sociology at Appalachian State University and a visiting researcher in criminal justice & sociology at the University of Wyoming. She is also a member of the Heterodox Academy Writers Group

Matt Moreali has taught as a first-year seminar instructor at Southern Oregon University for seven years. He is also a pre-law advisor and member of the Faculty Senate. Before teaching at SOU, Matt was a family law attorney, community college advisor, and legislative assistant in the Oregon House of Representatives and California Senate.

David Most is an Associate Professor specializing applied statistics and research methodology in the School of Education at Colorado State University and in the Department of Biostatistics and Informatics in the Colorado School of Public Health. His research and teaching interests regard methodological innovation and applications in the social and health sciences, with a focus on observational studies and developing thoughtfulness in the analysis of quantitative data.

Caroline Nappo, Ph.D. is an independent scholar who teaches and conducts research about the role of information institutions in society, with specializations in the history of libraries and information as a public good. Her current research, in collaboration with Professor Christine D’Arpa, explores the history of WPA projects at the Chicago Public Library. She has a master’s and Ph.D. in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Elizabeth Niehaus, Ph.D. is Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln and was a 2020-2021 Fellow with the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement.  Her research focuses on how we can create and improve educational environments to facilitate student learning and development in higher education, with a particular emphasis on the intersections of issues of free speech, academic freedom, and campus climate.

Phillip A. Olt, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of higher education student affairs at Fort Hays State University (Kansas), where he also serves as the Program Coordinator for the MSE in Higher Education Student Affairs. He is the moderator for the Hx Higher Education Leadership community. His research interests are (1) the points of intersection between society and higher education, (2) interaction between distance students and higher education personnel, and (3) qualitative research methodology.

Joseph Polizzi is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at Sacred Heart University.  Joe’s research and scholarship concentrates on ethical leadership, program redesign and using documentary film and the arts to inform educational leadership.  His first book titled: Understanding Suffering in Schools: Shining a Light on the Dark Places of Education from Routledge in August 2022 focuses on the challenges of schooling and imparting compassion, fortitude and grace in the practice of educational leadership. He is an active member of the Fulbright Alumni Association and lives in Guilford, Connecticut with his wife, Eva, an artist, and two children, Lily and Sofie Joy.

Professor Recchiuti, Ph.D. taught six years in Columbia University’s great books course in philosophy and political science. At University of Michigan he taught “Religion in America.” At UMU he teaches “Civic Engagement” a course grounded in the founding ideals and institutions of the United States and liberal democracy. He holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University, an M.A. from Warwick University; and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. 

Edward Remus has taught research skills to the students and faculty of Northeastern Illinois University since 2015. He has organized numerous library-based events featuring speakers with differing viewpoints on controversial topics at the intersection of history and politics. He is currently administering a virtual panel discussion series, “Perspectives on the Constitution,” with grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association. His publications include an article in the forthcoming edition of the Encyclopedia of the American Left about the organization Social Democrats, USA and a bibliographic essay in Choice magazine on the historiography of Debsian socialism.

Clay Routledge is a leading expert in in existential psychology, the Arden and Donna Hetland Distinguished Professor of Business at North Dakota State University, a senior research fellow at the Archbridge Institute, and a visiting fellow with the Program on Pluralism and Civil Exchange at the Mercatus Center. He has co-edited three books and authored two books, over 100 scholarly papers, and dozens of articles for popular outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, National Review, Entrepreneur, and Harvard Business Review. He is also an editor for Profectus, a periodic web-based magazine focused on civilizational progress and human flourishing.   

Jukka Savolainen is a Heterodox Academy Writing Fellow and a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He holds a dual appointment with the department of sociology and the department of criminology & criminal justice.

Brian Soucek, Ph.D. teaches constitutional law, civil procedure, and art law at UC Davis School of Law. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Columbia University, a JD from Yale Law School, and has previously taught at the University of Chicago, where he was Co-Chair of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. Professor Soucek recently chaired the University of California’s systemwide faculty committee on academic freedom, and he was a 2020 Fellow of UC’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement.

Elizabeth Spievak, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology at Bridgewater State University where she also served for over 10 years as chair of the Institutional Review Board. A degree in quantitative business analysis and an MBA in decision sciences led to an early career in business and consulting, which informs her psychological research on narrative, attention, and decision making. When she is not engaged in compliance work, teaching, or managing her undergraduate research lab, Elizabeth is typically exercising, or engaged in collaborative projects, including recent work with Counterweight Support affiliates.

Robert B. Talisse is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University.  He specializes in normative democratic theory, with an emphasis on political disagreement, polarization, and the ethics of citizenship.  His most recent book, which was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press, is titled Sustaining Democracy: What We Owe to the Other Side. 

Oliver Traldi is a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and a writing fellow at Heterodox Academy.

Mark Urista is a full-time faculty member at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Oregon where he teaches Communication courses and advises the college’s Civil Discourse Program.  He also is co-moderator for HxCommunity Colleges and the lead faculty advisor for Braver Angels’ College Debates & Discourse Program.

Erich Vieth is an attorney and Adjunct Professor of Law at Saint Louis University School of Law in St. Louis, Missouri.  Since the 1980’s, Erich has worked as a trial lawyer focusing on consumer law, class actions and appellate law. Since 2013, he has taught Civil Trial Practice as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Saint Louis University School of Law. Along with John Simon, he co-hosts a nationally syndicated podcast for trial lawyers, “The Jury is Out.”  Since 2006, Erich has written extensively on cognitive science and many other topics at Dangerous Intersection. 

Kyle Sebastian Vitale, Ph.D. is Director of Programs at Heterodox Academy. He comes to HxA with a background in higher education, program management, and learning theory. Prior to joining the HxA team he supported teaching and learning initiatives at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Yale University, and Temple University. He grew to love the higher education mission while reading, writing, and teaching all things Shakespeare. Kyle has taught literature, writing, and professional development for over a decade, and is co-editor of the book Shakespeare and Digital Pedagogy: Case Studies and Strategies (Bloomsbury, December 2021).

Shelly Zhou, Ph.D. is a researcher for Heterodox Academy, where she works on the Campus Expression Survey. She completed her doctorate degree in social psychology at the University of Toronto, and studies social interactions among diverse groups of people, and the benefits that these interactions have for reducing prejudice (e.g., “isms” like racism and sexism).

Steven Zhou is a Ph.D. student in psychology at George Mason University. His research is in leadership, teams, psychometrics and multivariate statistics, and higher ed policy and pedagogy. As a Data Analyst for Heterodox Academy, he seeks to find effective ways to collect, analyze, and visualize data in a way that generates accurate insights into the state of higher education and viewpoint diversity.