ISI Honors Conference 2023

Dr. Khalil M Habib is Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College, where he teaches political philosophy and American political thought. Dr. Habib has co-edited two books, The Soul of Statesmanship: Shakespeare on Nature, Virtue, and Political Wisdom, and Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Globalization: Citizens Without States.

Andrew Willard Jones holds a PhD in Medieval History from Saint Louis University with a focus on the Church of the High Middle Ages. Jones’s work is primarily concerned with historical political theology and with the reconciliation of the post-modern with the pre-modern. Methodologically, his work treats history as a theological discipline and not as a secular archaeology. Jones is the author of Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in St. Louis IX’s Sacramental Kingdom and the one-volume history of the Catholic Church The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics. He is also working on an overview of the Church’s social teaching.

Susan Hanssen received her graduate degree in history from Rice University in Houston, TX. She received her undergraduate degree in history from Boston University (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa). During the summer of 2008 she was adjunct professor for the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation at Georgetown University. She was the 2010-2011 Garwood Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

Luke C. Sheahan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Duquesne University and a Non-Resident Scholar at the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (PRRUCS) at the University of Pennsylvania. He researches the intersection of First Amendment rights and political theory. Sheahan’s scholarly articles and reviews have appeared in The Political Science Reviewer, Humanitas, Anamnesis, and The Journal of Value Inquiry and he has lectured widely on religious liberty, freedom of speech, and freedom of association. He is author of Why Associations Matter: The Case for First Amendment Pluralism (Amazon; Barnes and Noble). He is writing a second book tentatively titled “Pluralism and Toleration: Difference, Justice, and the Social Group.”

Brad Littlejohn, Ph.D., is a Fellow in EPPC’s Evangelicals in Civic Life Program, where his work focuses on helping public leaders understand the intellectual and historical foundations of our current breakdown of public trust, social cohesion, and sound governance. His research investigates shifting understandings of the nature of freedom and authority, and how a more full-orbed conception of freedom, rooted in the Christian tradition, can inform policy that respects both the dignity of the individual and the urgency of the common good. He also serves as President of the Davenant Institute. He was previously a fellow at the Edmund Burke Foundation.

Yoram Hazony is an Israeli philosopher, Bible scholar and political theorist. He is the Chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, and serves as the President of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem. His book, The Virtue of Nationalism (Basic Books, 2018), won the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Conservative Book of the Year Award in 2019.

Dr. Chad Pecknold is an Associate Professor of Theology at The Catholic University of America, Board Director for Americans United for Life, Resident Theologian at The Basilica of St. Mary’s Institute for Faith & Public Culture, Contributing Editor for The Catholic Herald, and co-founder of the online magazine Postliberal Order. Dr. Pecknold is the author of Christianity & Politics: A Brief Guide to the History, Transforming Postliberal Theology and The T&T Clark Companion to Augustine and Modern Theology. He is known foremost for his recovery of Augustine as a Catholic political thinker. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and their five children.

Patrick J. Deneen holds a B.A. in English literature and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University.  From 1995-1997 he was Speechwriter and Special Advisor to the Director of the United States Information Agency.  From 1997-2005 he was Assistant Professor of Government at Princeton University.  From 2005-2012 he was Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University, before joining the faculty of Notre Dame in Fall 2012.  He is the author and editor of several books and numerous articles and reviews and has delivered invited lectures around the world.

Deneen was awarded the A.P.S.A.’s Leo Strauss Award for Best Dissertation in Political Theory in 1995, and an honorable mention for the A.P.S.A.’s Best First Book Award in 2000.  He has been awarded research fellowships from Princeton University, Earhart Foundation, and the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Virginia.

His teaching and writing interests focus on the history of political thought, American political thought, liberalism, conservatism, and constitutionalism.   

Jay W. Richards, Ph.D., is Director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family, and the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He also is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute adjunct professor at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America.  

Richards is author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated (2013) and Indivisible (2012); Money, Greed, and God, winner of a 2010 Templeton Enterprise Award; and The Human Advantage.

He is also creator and executive producer of several documentaries, including three that have appeared widely on PBS. 

Richards’ articles and essays have been published in The Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Washington Post, The New York Post, Newsweek, Forbes, Fox News, National Review Online, The Hill, Investor’s Business Daily, Washington Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Huffington Post, The Federalist, The Daily Caller, and many other publications.

His work has been covered widely in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Nature, Science, Astronomy, Physics Today, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Congressional Quarterly Researcher.

He has appeared on over a thousand radio and television programs, including Larry King Live (CNN), CBS Evening News, MSNBC, Huckabee, Dayside, Fox and Friends, Studio B with Shepard Smith (Fox News), Glenn Beck TV, PBS, CBN, TBN, and is a regular guest on EWTN.

An experienced public speaker, he has spoken at academic conferences; college and university campuses in the United States, Europe, and Asia; many think tanks in the U.S. and Europe; public policy meetings; and on several occasions to members of the U.S. Congress and U.S. congressional staff. His 2008 debate at Stanford University with Christopher Hitchens, moderated by Ben Stein, was broadcast live to several hundred churches in North America.

Dr. Benedict Whalen is Associate Professor of English at Hillsdale College. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Dallas, and went on to study at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he received his master’s degree and his Ph.D. Dr. Whalen taught at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, before coming to Hillsdale College in 2014.

While a true generalist at heart, Dr. Whalen specializes in Renaissance British Literature, including the works of Shakespeare, Milton, and the lyric poetry of the period. He has published several articles on the works of Shakespeare, Donne, and Renaissance drama and has edited a volume of the poetry of the English martyrs titled Lyra Martyrum. He has served as the Book Review Editor for the Ben Jonson Journal since 2008. He was honored as Hillsdale College Professor of the Year in 2020.

Dr. Whalen lives in Hillsdale with his wife Lisa and their six children.

Carl Trueman (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. He has written more than a dozen books, including Histories and Fallacies: Problems Faced in the Writing of History, Luther on the Christian Life, The Creedal Imperative, and The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution.