President: William F. Byrne

Vice-President: William Smith

Treasurer: Luke C. Sheahan

Secretary: Jay Schalin

Board of Directors

Andrew Balio
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

William F. Byrne
St. John’s University

William F. Byrne is Associate Professor of Government and Politics at St. John’s University (NY), where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in political theory and American politics.  A former Congressional staff member, Dr. Byrne also spent several years in the private sector before entering academia.  He holds a Ph.D. in Politics from The Catholic University of America, an M.B.A. from George Mason University, and a B.A. in History from the University of Pennsylvania.  An Associate Editor of the journal Humanitas, he is the author of Edmund Burke for Our Time:  Moral Imagination, Meaning, and Politics, as well as of numerous scholarly articles.

Lowell Gustafson
Villanova University

Lowell Gustafson is professor of political science at Villanova University.  He is the author of The Sovereignty Dispute over the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands, contributing editor of Thucydides’s Theory of International Relations: A Lasting Possession, and other books and articles.  He also currently serves as president of the International Big History Association.

Justin B. Litke
Catholic University of America

Justin B. Litke earned the Ph.D. with distinction at Georgetown University, where he studied with the great George W. Carey. As an undergraduate at Catholic University, he earned a bachelor’s degree in Politics and Philosophy. His doctoral work explored the idea of American exceptionalism, arguing that its origin and significance are due to a series of intellectual changes in the course of American history. It became the basis for his book, Twilight of the Republic: Empire and Exceptionalism in the American Political Tradition (2013). His writing has also appeared in Society, Anamnesis, The Journal of Church and State, and at The American Conservative online.

Dr. Litke’s work centers on the transmission of political traditions through time, especially focusing on the intersection of political theory and practical politics. He is currently at work on a manuscript that argues for the deep connection between the American republican tradition and a restrained foreign policy. Another manuscript on American statesman Henry Clay is also in the works.

Jay Schalin
The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

Luke C. Sheahan
Duquesne University

Luke C. Sheahan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Duquesne University and a Non-Resident Scholar in 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 Humanitas, Anamnesis, The Political Science Reviewer, and Perspectives on Political Science 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. Sheahan is also working on a manuscript tentatively titled Pluralism and Toleration: Difference, Justice, and the Social Group. 

Sheahan received a PhD and MA in political theory from the Catholic University of America and a B.S. in political science from the Honors College at Oregon State University. From 2016-2018 he was a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Political Science at Duke University and from 2018-2019 he was Associate Director and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Freedom Project, an academic institute at Wellesley College. Sheahan is a five-time recipient of the Humane Studies Fellowship from the Institute for Humane Studies, a 2014 recipient of the Richard M. Weaver Fellowship from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), a 2015-2016 recipient of a dissertation research fellowship from the Catholic University of America, and a 2018 recipient of the Leonard Liggio Memorial Fellowship.

William S. Smith
Center for the Study of Statesmanship

William S. Smith is Research Fellow and Managing Director of the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at the Catholic University of America (CUA). He earned his PhD with distinction at CUA and a bachelor’s in history from Georgetown University. His dissertation explored war and peace in democratic societies by applying critiques of Romanticism offered by Irving Babbitt, the esteemed Harvard scholar. Mr. Smith’s thesis links Babbitt’s concept of democratic imperialism to certain theorists of democracy, particularly Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and makes historical and contemporary applications.

Mr. Smith also has 25 years of experience in government and in corporate roles. His career has included senior staff positions for the Republican House leadership on Capitol Hill, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, and in the Governor’s office in Massachusetts. He then spent ten years at Pfizer Inc as Vice President of Public Affairs and Policy where he was responsible for Pfizer’s corporate strategies for the U.S. policy environment. He later served as a consultant to major pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies.

C.R. Wiley
Presbyterian Church of Manchester

Rev. C.R. Wiley is Senior Pastor at the Presbyterian Church of Manchester (Manchester, CT). He has written for Touchstone Magazine, Modern Reformation, Sacred Architecture, The Imaginative Conservative, Front Porch Republic, National Review Online, and First Things, among others. His most recent book is, The Household and the War for the Cosmos published by Canon Press (2019). His short fiction has appeared in The Mythic Circle (published by the Mythopoeic Society) and elsewhere, and the first book in his young adult fantasy series, The Purloined Boy was published by Canonball Books (2017).