Gateway to Statesmanship Book Launch with Johnny Burtka

John A. Burtka IV is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. He graduated from Hillsdale College with degrees in French and Christian Studies and earned a graduate degree in theology from La Faculté Jean Calvin in Aix-en-Provence, France. Johnny began his career at ISI, where he served as a development officer. He returned to ISI after four years at The American Conservative magazine, where he served as Executive Director and Acting Editor. Johnny has appeared on Fox News and Fox Business and written for the Washington Post, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, First Things, the American Mind, and the Intercollegiate Review, among other publications. He has been a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute and has participated in academic fellowships at Washington College and the Trinity Forum. Johnny lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Amanda.

Enrique Pallares is a political theorist who specializes in the history of ideas, modernity, liberalism, continental philosophy, ideology and totalitarianism, and the relationship between transcendence and the symbolic articulations of order in history. He holds a B.A. in Literature and Philosophy from The New School University in New York and a Ph.D. in Political Theory from The Catholic University of America, where he has taught in the Politics Department and in the School of Philosophy. Dr. Pallares is finishing a book manuscript on the concept of the person in modernity, with a particular focus on the work of Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, and is working on a book project on the political philosophy of the Spanish liberal tradition. He is a Fellow at the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture at Washington College and a Research Associate at The Catholic University of America. He is originally from Ecuador, has lived in Argentina and Spain, and is the co-founder of Casa Carmen—a farm, winery, and vermouth producer in the Brandywine Valley of Pennsylvania, where he lives with his family.

Joseph Prud’homme is the Burton Family Chair in Religion, Politics, and Culture and Associate Professor of Political Science and Affiliated Faculty member in Religious Studies. Professor Prud’homme is the founding Director of the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture at Washington College. He received his doctorate from Princeton University, where he studied in the Interdepartmental Program in Political Philosophy, with additional specialization in constitutional law and religious studies. He was awarded a Fellowship at Harvard University, where he studied at the Harvard Law School and served as a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He has also held a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Oxford.

Professor Prud’homme works in the areas of political philosophy, legal theory, intellectual history and religious studies. He has published numerous works in these fields, including the books Religion and Politics in America from the Colonial Period to the Civil War; Curriculum and the Culture Wars: Debating the Bible’s Place in Public Schools (with Melissa Deckman of Washington College); State Religious Education and the State of Religious Life (with Liam Gearon of the University of Oxford); the chapter on Religion and Education for the Palgrave Handbook on Religion and the State; and numerous peer-reviewed articles.

He teaches political theory, constitutional law, and Western religious traditions. He earned two bachelor’s degrees with three majors and a minor at Texas A&M University, where he graduated magna cum laude and with an honors certificate. He directs a partnership between Washington College and the University of Oxford. He is also a frequent guest lecturer.