Col. Douglas Macgregor
Patrick J. Deneen
C. J. Howard

Col. Douglas Macgregor is a decorated combat veteran, an author of five books, a Ph.D., and a defense and foreign policy consultant. He is widely known inside the U.S., Europe, Israel, Russia, China and Korea for both his leadership in the Battle of 73 Easting, the U.S. Army’s largest tank battle since World War II, and for his groundbreaking books on military transformation: Breaking the Phalanx (Praeger, 1997) and Transformation under Fire (Praeger, 2003). Macgregor’s recommendations for change in Force Design and “integrated all arms-all effects” operations have profoundly influenced force development in Israel, Russia, and China.

In 2010, Macgregor traveled to Seoul, Korea to advise the ROK Ministry of Defense on force design. In 2019, Transformation under Fire was selected by Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, Chief of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), as the intellectual basis for IDF transformation. His fifth book, Margin of Victory: Five Battles that Changed the Face of Modern War from Naval Institute Press is available in Chinese as well as English and will soon appear in Hebrew.

In 28 years of service Macgregor taught in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point, commanded the 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry, and served as the Director of the Joint Operations Center at SHAPE during the 1999 Kosovo Air Campaign for which he was awarded the Defense Superior Service medal. In January 2002, at Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s insistence, the USCENTCOM Commander listened to Colonel Macgregor’s concept for the offensive to seize Baghdad. The plan was largely adopted, but assumed no occupation of Iraq by U.S. Forces.

Macgregor has also testified as an expert witness before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees and appeared as a defense analyst on Fox News, CNN, BBC, Sky News, and public radio. He is fluent in German.

Patrick J. Deneen is Professor of Political Science and holds the David A. Potenziani Memorial Chair of Constitutional Studies at the University of Notre Dame.  Prior to joining the faculty of Notre Dame in 2012, he taught at Princeton University (1997-2005) and Georgetown University (2005-2012), where he held the Markos and Eleni Tsakapoulos-Kounalakis Chair in Hellenic Studies.  

Deneen has written five books and edited three others.  His books include The Odyssey of Political Theory, Democratic Faith, Conserving America?, Why Liberalism Failed (translated into twenty languages), and most recently, Regime Change. 

In addition to academic work, he frequently writes for journals of opinion, including First Things, The American Conservative and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He receives frequent invitations to lecture in both academic and non-academic settings and he has lectured at many academic institutions, including Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Valpariaso University, Georgetown University, University of Virginia, Yale University, Princeton University, Eckerd College, Villanova University, Hope College, University of Chicago, Hillsdale College, Augustana College, Mercer University, Berry College, Colby College, Gonzaga University, as well as at universities in England, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, Italy, Australia and Ireland.

While at Georgetown University, Deneen founded and served as Founding Director of the “Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy,” which became a vibrant center for reflection on the contributions of political thought to American politics and culture.  At the University of Notre Dame he is an affiliate faculty with the Tocqueville Program for Inquiry into Religion and American Public Life, and the Minor in Constitutional Studies, both of which he served as Interim Director from 2014-2015.

Deneen lives in South Bend, IN with his wife, Inge, and three children, and they are parishioners at St. Joseph Parish of South Bend. They are proud to own the house that once belonged to Notre Dame legend Edward “Moose” Krause.

C.J. Howard is principal architect at C.J. Howard Architecture LLC. He is a registered architect who has spent more than two decades practicing in the Washington, D.C. region. He has extensive experience working for firms nationally known for their commitment to, and expertise in, classical and traditional design. Since 2017, Mr. Howard has also served as Assistant Professor at The Catholic University of America where he teaches in the newly launched classical traditional architecture and urbanism track.

Mr. Howard has most recently been a Lead Project Architect for McCrery Architects in Washington, D.C., leading the design and construction of major ecclesiastical projects (both to benefit vibrant and growing Catholic communities on university campuses as well as expanding dioceses). Some of those projects include: a new Thomas Aquinas Chapel and Blessed John Newman Student Center at the University of Nebraska (Lincoln), renovated Saint John Paul the Great Chapel at Mundelein University, a New Christ the King Chapel for Franciscan University of Steubenville and a new Sacred Heart Cathedral in Knoxville, TN.

In addition to his ecclesiastical portfolio, Mr. Howard has worked on a variety of residential and civic projects including several urban design projects in collaboration with the District Department of Transportation, to propose visionary new projects for our Nation’s Capital. He has also garnered attention for his entries in design competitions including a 2008 winning entry for a Contrabands’ and Freedmen’s Cemetery Memorial in Alexandria, Virginia. His winning design, chosen from among several hundred entries submitted from 20 countries, was used as the design framework for the memorial which was completed and dedicated in 2014. 

Mr. Howard received both his Bachelor of Architecture (2000) and Master of Architectural Design and Urbanism (2010) from the University of Notre Dame. In 2010, Mr. Howard received the Ferguson & Shamamian Graduate Prize for excellence in classical/traditional design exhibited in a graduate thesis. In 2019, Mr. Howard won the Leicester B. Holland Prize Competition. He is licensed in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of Maryland and is a member of the Institute of Classical Architecture, National Civic Art Society, and National Council of Architecture Registration Boards.