Claes Ryn was Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of American (CUA) for more than forty years. He is the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Statesmanship. The recipient of many awards and grants, Professor Ryn was named Outstanding Graduate Professor by the CUA Graduate Student Association in 1992. In 2011 he received the CUA faculty award for Distinguished Achievement in Research. His many books include A Common Human Ground, America the Virtuous, Will, Imagination and Reason, Democracy and the Ethical Life, and the novel A Desperate Man. He has published and lectured widely on both sides of the Atlantic and in Asia, especially China. In 2000, he gave the Distinguished Foreign Scholar Lectures at Beijing University, which published this series as a book, Unity Through Diversity (in Chinese translation). Three of Ryn’s books and many of his other writings have appeared in Chinese translation. In 2012, Beijing Normal University named him Honorary Professor. Ryn is editor of Humanitas. He was co-founder and President of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters and co-founder and Chairman of the National Humanities Institute. Ryn is the first recipient of APL’s Irving Babbitt Award and he will deliver the dinner lecture on Thursday night.

Justin Shubow is President of the National Civic Art Society, a non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. that promotes the classical and humanistic tradition in public art and architecture. He is the eleventh Chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal agency comprising seven presidential appointees who are the aesthetic guardians of Washington. He also serves as the executive director of Rebuild Penn Station, a National Civic Art Society initiative to promote the reconstruction of the original Pennsylvania Station in New York City designed by McKim, Mead & White, and he is a member of the Board of Academic Advisors for the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. He also serves on the Board of Advisors of the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation. Mr. Shubow has testified in Congress on topics such as the future of the National Mall and the design of the Eisenhower Memorial. He is the author of The Gehry Towers over Eisenhower: The National Civic Art Society Report on the Eisenhower Memorial, a critical examination of the memorial’s competition, design, and agency approval. He has published architectural criticism at Forbes online, First Things, Public Discourse, The Washington Post, and The Weekly Standard. Mr. Shubow is a former editor at Forward newspaper and Commentary magazine, and is a recipient of a Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship. Mr. Shubow is a graduate of Yale Law School. He will deliver the dinner lecture on Friday night.

Timon Cline is a graduate of Rutgers Law School (JD), Westminster Theological Seminary (MAR), and Wright State University (BS). He is a Deputy Attorney General for the Office of the New Jersey Attorney General, Division of Law. He is also a research fellow at the Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards at Westminster where he is working on the natural law theory in Puritanism, specifically in the thought of Thomas Goodwin. Previously he was a legal fellow at The Markup, an associate editor for the Rutgers Journal of Law & Religion, and a managing editor of Law & Philosophy. His popular writing has appeared at American Mind, Areo Magazine, The American Spectator, National Review, and American Reformer, among others, and he is a regular contributor at Modern Reformation. His recent academic work has been published at Unio Cum Christo, Appalachian Law Journal, St. Thomas Journal of Law & Public Policy, and the Jonathan Edwards Miscellanies Companion. Cline will discuss pluralism and nationalism with Samuel Goldman during Friday’s luncheon.

Samuel Goldman is Associate Professor of Political Science at George Washington University where he is also Executive Director of the John L. Loeb, Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom and Director of the Politics & Values Program. His first book God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2018. His second book, After Nationalism, was published from the University of Pennsylvania Press in early 2021. In addition to his academic research, Goldman is a contributing editor at The American Conservative. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Professor Goldman received his PhD from Harvard University in 2010. Goldman will discuss pluralism and nationalism with Timon Cline during Friday’s luncheon.

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