Robert Alt is the president and chief executive officer of The Buckeye Institute, where he also serves on the Board of Directors.

Alt’s leadership catalyzed The Buckeye Institute’s exponential growth since he took the organization’s helm in 2012. He is the founder of Buckeye’s Economic Research Center and Legal Center.

Alt is a distinguished scholar with particular expertise in legal policy, including criminal justice, national security and constitutional law. Prior to heading The Buckeye Institute, Alt was a director in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies under former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III where Alt co-founded the Joseph Story Distinguished Lecture series.

Alt is a frequent speaker at universities and law schools across the country, and his writings have appeared in countless publications. Alt has been a longtime contributor to National Review Online and its Bench Memos blog. He has provided commentary on CNN, Fox News Channel, PBS and its affiliates, and numerous syndicated radio programs.

In 2004, Alt spent five months in Iraq as an embedded war correspondent.

Alt has testified before Congress multiple times—including at the confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan—before the Federal Election Commission regarding matters of constitutional and administrative law, and before numerous state legislatures and committees.

Alt serves on the Federalist Society’s Columbus Lawyers Chapter board. He previously taught national security law, criminal law, and legislation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, as well as constitutional law and political parties and interest groups at Ashland University.

Alt earned his Doctor of Law degree from The University of Chicago Law School, where he was Symposium Editor and the winner of the Mulroy Prize for Excellence in Appellate Advocacy as well as research assistant to renowned law professor Richard Epstein. Following law school, Alt clerked for Judge Alice Batchelder on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Alt graduated with his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and political science magna cum laude from Azusa Pacific University where he also won the Outstanding Senior Award in Political Science.

Brittany Baldwin is a senior policy advisor on the White House Task Force 250, coordinating the year-long celebration across the federal government. Prior to rejoining the administration, Brittany was the founder and owner of Illuminate Consulting, where she worked with leaders in the public and private sector to advance their goals through strategic vision setting, communications, and execution of bold ideas. Through her close collaboration and writing, she has helped produce a #1 New York Times bestseller. Brittany also served as the executive director of the Morse Foundation, which aims to improve educational outcomes for underserved students.

During President Trump’s first term, Brittany served as Special Assistant to the President and speechwriter for four years. A native of Houston, Texas, Brittany previously worked for Senator Ted Cruz and earned her B.A. in American Studies from Hillsdale College.

Ryan Bangert serves as senior vice president for strategic initiatives and special counsel to the president at Alliance Defending Freedom. He oversees ADF’s regulatory practice, government relations, and corporate engagement teams. He also advises executive leadership with strategic initiatives and appears as counsel for ADF clients.

Before joining ADF, Bangert served as deputy first assistant attorney general and deputy for legal counsel in the office of the Texas attorney general. In those roles, he oversaw the state’s Special Litigation Unit, which handled critical litigation against the federal government, and oversaw multiple divisions within the office. Prior to that, he served as deputy for civil litigation for Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, overseeing the state’s civil litigation divisions, including the consumer protection and antitrust divisions, with over 200 attorneys and staff. During his time in government service, Bangert handled a diverse array of matters involving Big Tech, election law, civil rights, multistate antitrust and consumer protection investigations, and many other issues.

Prior to his government service, Bangert was a litigation partner at Baker Botts L.L.P., where he was a member of the firm’s commercial litigation and appellate practice sections. A seasoned trial attorney, The Texas Lawyer ranked the verdict Bangert achieved in the Janvey v. Maldonado case as the #1 verdict in the securities category for 2015-2019, and The National Law Journal ranked it in its “Top 100 Verdicts of 2015.” He was named a “Texas Rising Star” for multiple years by Texas Lawyer and Law and Politics magazines. While at Baker Botts, he was a volunteer attorney for ADF and served as amicus counsel in numerous cases, including Trinity Lutheran v. Comer and Salazar v. Buono, receiving the firm’s Opus Justitae Award in recognition of his outstanding commitment to pro bono service.

Bangert earned his J.D. from Southern Methodist University, where he was a Hatton Sumner’s scholar and graduated first in his class. He also participated in ADF’s Blackstone program and is a Blackstone Fellow. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Bangert is a member of the Philadelphia Society and Federalist Society. He is admitted to practice law in Texas, California (inactive), Missouri (inactive), the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal district and appellate courts. A frequent op-ed contributor, his work has appeared in National Review, Daily Wire, The Hill, Washington Examiner, The Federalist, Fox News, and RealClear Religion. He speaks nationally on constitutional, cultural, and religious liberty issues.

For more than 20 years David Bobb has been one of the leading advocates for strong history and civic education in the United States.

David is president and CEO of the Bill of Rights Institute, a position he’s held since 2013. David serves on the advisory board for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s National Civics Bee and on the Steering Committee for Educating for Democracy, a cross-ideological roadmap for civic learning and engagement. He also co-chairs the civics working group of the Aspen Institute’s Cross-Partisan Network.

Author of Humility: An Unlikely Biography of America’s Greatest Virtue, and a chapter on Frederick Douglass in a volume published by Oxford University Press, David has written for the Wall Street Journal and Education Week, among more than 100 other publications.

David earned a Ph.D. in political science from Boston College.

Dr. Anne Rathbone Bradley is the George and Sally Mayer Fellow for Economic Education and vice president of academic affairs at The Fund for American Studies. Through this position, Dr. Bradley works to enhance the impact and reach of TFAS and FTE economic education programs through courses, seminars, videos and social media. She also delivers lectures around the country and oversees curriculum development and evaluation for economics courses. In addition to her role as a fellow and vice president of academic affairs, Dr. Bradley continues to teach impactful economics courses to TFAS students and consistently receives outstanding marks in students’ post-program evaluations.

Previously, Dr. Bradley served as the vice president of economic initiatives at the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics, where she continues to research a systematic biblical theology of economic freedom. In addition to her work with TFAS, she is a professor of economics at The Institute for World Politics and Grove City College. She is a visiting professor at George Mason University and has previously taught at Georgetown University and Charles University in Prague. She is currently an Acton Affiliate scholar and a visiting scholar at the Bernard Center for Women, Politics & Public Policy. She is a lecturer for the Institute for Humane Studies and the Foundation for Economic Education.

Dr. Bradley is the co-editor and author of “Counting the Cost: Christian Perspectives on Capitalism,” “For the Least of These: A Biblical Answer to Poverty,” and “Be Fruitful and Multiply: Why Economics is Necessary for Making God-Pleasing Decisions.”

She served as the associate director for the Program in Economics, Politics and the Law at the James M. Buchanan Center at George Mason University. Dr. Bradley’s academic work ranges on the question of income inequality and economic freedom as well as the political economy of terrorism, with specific emphasis on the industrial organization of al-Qaeda. Her academic research has been published in scholarly journals and edited volumes. She is currently working on a book that analyzes the political economy of al-Qaeda post 9/11. Based on her academic research, she also worked as an economic analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of Terrorism Analysis.

Dr. Bradley received her Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University in 2006, during which time she was a James M. Buchanan Scholar.

Janice Rogers Brown was confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on June 8, 2005. She retired from that court in 2017. From 1996 to 2005, she was Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. Previously, she served as Associate Justice of the Third District Court of Appeals in Sacramento and as the Legal Affairs Secretary to Governor Pete Wilson.

Janice Brown currently serves on the boards of the Coolidge Foundation, the Association of College Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), the Woodson Center and its affiliated 1776 Unites Project, the Ulyssess S. Grant Institute for the Study of Democracy. She chairs the Advisory Board of The New Civil Liberties Alliance and is (occasionally) a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

Brown is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law and California State University, Sacramento. In 2004 she received a Master of Laws degree in Judicial Process after completing the Graduate Program for Judges at the University of Virginia School of Law.

She has been honored with the Jurisprudence Award of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, the Originalism and Religious Liberty Award of the Alliance Defending Freedom, the James Wilson Institute Leadership and the Law Award, the Baroness Thatcher Liberty Award of the Pacific Research Institute, and was selected as a 2019 recipient of the Bradley Award.

Eric Cohen is the Executive Director of Tikvah, where he has served in a leadership role since 2007. He is one of the founders and chairman of the board of Emet Classical Academy, and he has been involved in founding many publications, including The New Atlantis (where he continues to serve as Editor-at-Large), the Jewish Review of Books, and Mosaic Magazine (where he serves as publisher). He was also instrumental in building Tikvah’s operations in Israel, and he serves on the board of directors of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Hertog Foundation.

He writes regularly in numerous academic and popular journals, magazines, and newspapers. He is the author of  ”In the Shadow of Progress: Being Human in the Age of Technology” and co-editor of  “The Future is Now: America Confronts the New Genetics.” He was previously managing editor of the Public Interest and served as a senior advisor to the President’s Council on Bioethics.

Donald Devine is senior scholar at The Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C. He served as President Ronald Reagan’s civil service director during the president’s first term in office. During that time, The Washington Post labeled him “Reagan’s Terrible Swift Sword of the Civil Service” for cutting bureaucratic excesses and reducing billions in spending.

Before and after his government service, Devine was an academic, teaching 14 years as associate professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and for a decade as a professor of Western civilization at Bellevue University. In the definitive work on Frank Meyer’s essays, Devine was listed as one of the dozen “leading lights” of the postwar fusionist reevaluation of conservative and libertarian thinking.

He is a columnist appearing regularly in The American Spectator, The Imaginative Conservative and Law & Liberty and is the author of 11 books, including his most recent, “Ronald Reagan’s Enduring Principles: How They Can Promote Political Success Today” and “The Enduring Tension: Capitalism and the Moral Order.”

Today, Devine writes and teaches young people, speaking about reviving the Constitution and what Reagan called the secret of its success: the way it harmonized freedom and tradition in its fragile balance called federalism.

Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1986; he served as Chief Judge from 2001 to 2008. After receiving his BS from Cornell University in 1970, and his JD from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973, he clerked for Judge Carl McGowan on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court.

Thereafter, Judge Ginsburg was a full professor at the Harvard Law School, Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget, and Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. Concurrent with his service on the federal bench, Judge Ginsburg has taught at the law schools of the University of Chicago, New York University, Columbia, Harvard, and University College London. Judge Ginsburg is currently a Senior Judge on the D.C. Circuit and a Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University.

For the last several years he has been creating materials for civic education, including his documentary series for public television on the Constitution (“A More or Less Perfect Union,” 2020) and on the Declaration of Independence (“We Hold these Truths,” 2023), available at declarationmovie.com; the 128 short videos addressing the questions on the naturalization test (CivicsFundamentals.org), which is used widely in middle and high schools; and other instructional videos on civil rights, the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court cases on the AP U.S. Government and Politics exam,

In 2022 he received the Freedom of the City of London for his contributions to the rule of law.

Dr. Samuel Goldman teaches American Political Thought for TFAS Academic Internship Programs in Washington, D.C.

He is also an associate professor of humanities at the University of Florida’s Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education. His scholarship is at the intersection of political theory and intellectual history, with a focus on religious sources of American national identity. Goldman is author of two books: “After Nationalism: Being American in a Divided Age” (UPenn, 2021) and “God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America” (UPenn, 2018). In addition to academic work, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and many other publications.

Brenda Hafera is the Assistant Director and Research Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies. She previously served as the Director of International and Continuing Education at The Fund for American Studies and the Assistant Director of the Matthew J. Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good at Villanova University.

Brenda holds a bachelor of arts in Political Science, a bachelor of science in Finance, and a master’s in Political Science from Villanova University. She was a Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute and a James Madison Fellow at Hillsdale College. Her articles have appeared in publications such as Modern Age, The Federalist, Law and Liberty, The National Interest, RealClear Public Affairs, and The Hill.

Daniel Hannan, Lord of Kingsclere, is the TFAS America 250 Visiting Fellow, writer and historian. He is the author of nine books, including two NYT bestsellers: The New Road to Serfdom and Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples made the Modern World.

Lord Hannan served as a Member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2020, during which time he founded Vote Leave, the organization that campaigned successfully for Brexit in 2016.

He sits as a Conservative member of the House of Lords and serves as the International Secretary of the British Conservative Party.

He is President of the Institute for Free Trade, a Fellow of the Independent Institute, a Visiting Professor at the University of Francisco Marroquín (Guatemala) and a Board member of the University of the Hesperides (Spain).

He contributes regularly to Reason Magazine and the National Review, and has weekly columns in the Washington Examiner and the Daily Telegraph.

Victoria Hughes combines over 50 years of education and nonprofit experience with a deep commitment to our American Founding Principles. She began her career as a middle school teacher of American History in suburban Cincinnati during the Bicentennial year.

After leaving the classroom, Victoria held senior executive roles in the government and nonprofit sector including the U.S. Information Agency, the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, and the Reason Foundation before returning to her roots in history and civic education.

In that field Victoria served for eleven years as Founding President of the Bill of Rights Institute building that nonprofit into a national leader in Civic Education. She capped her career as Senior Director of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University encouraging teachers to use primary source documents to teach our nation’s history. In both roles Victoria helped thousands of teachers and students strengthen their understanding of America’s history and constitutional self-government.

Victoria was also confirmed by the Senate to serve on the Board of the Corporation for National and Community Service, a U.S. federal government agency that engages Americans in AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and other volunteer programs. During the past six years, Victoria has served as Co-Chair of the Civics, History, and America’s Future Advisory Council at America250.  In August 2025, Victoria accepted a position as a Special Government Employee at the U.S. Department of Education, where she is focusing on programs dealing with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Victoria is married to Ambassador G. Philip Hughes and resides in Millwood, Virginia.

James M. Lapeyre, Jr. (Jay) is president of Laitram, LLC. Laitram is a diversified global manufacturer of plastic conveyor belting, high speed package sorting, shrimp processing equipment and space-saving stairs.

Lapeyre is chair of the Cato Institute and The Atlas Society Boards in Washington, D.C. He is a past chair of the board of Tulane University, The Business Council of New Orleans, The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, The New Orleans Crime Coalition and the Isidore Newman School Board of Governors. Post-Katrina, Lapeyre has been

actively engaged in efforts to reform and improve local and state government to improve flood safety, Orleans assessors, Orleans Sewerage and Water governance, charter schools, criminal justice, and the Orleans Inspector General and Independent Police Monitor.

Lapeyre earned his BA from the University of Texas and his MBA and JD from Tulane University. He and Sally have three married children and seven grandchildren.

Mark Levin was born in Pennsylvania in 1957.  A magna cum laude graduate from Temple University Ambler with a B.A. in Political Science at 19, Levin earned his J.D. from Temple University Beasley School of Law in 1980.  He attended TFAS’s Public Policy and Economics summer program in Washington, D.C. in 1976.

Levin served as an advisor to several members of President Reagan’s cabinet, including as Chief of Staff to the Attorney General Edwin Meese, Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Education, and Deputy Solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

As a highly respected legal and constitutional scholar, Levin brought his compelling perspectives to talk radio as a frequent on-air guest of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.  WABC-AM in New York offered Levin his own show in 2002, and in 2006, The Mark Levin Show launched into national syndication.

Today, he’s one of the most respected political radio hosts in the country, heard by millions each week on terrestrial and satellite radio.  Levin also hosts digital and cable television programs where he provides keen insight into today’s national and international issues.  The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Levin is also a New York Times best-selling author of seven books, and Chairman of the Board of Landmark Legal Foundation.

Wilfred M. McClay is Professor of History at Hillsdale College, where he holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair of Classical History and Western Civilization. His book The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America received the 1995 Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American intellectual history. Among his other books are The Student’s Guide to U.S. History; Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America; Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past; Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Public Life in Modern America; the award-winning bestseller, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story; and most recently Jewish Roots of American Liberty: The Impact of Hebraic Ideas on the American Story.

He has taught at the University of Oklahoma, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Tulane University, Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Public Policy, Georgetown University, and the University of Dallas, and has served as a Senior Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Rome. He has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and serves on the boards of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Jack Miller Center, and as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Scholars. He served for eleven years on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is currently a member of the U.S. Commission on the Semiquincentennial, which has been charged with planning the celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Academy of Education, and received the Bradley Prize in 2022. He is a graduate of St. John’s College (Annapolis) and received his Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University.

Dan McConchie grew up in rural Indiana as the oldest of four boys. He joined the Army National Guard on his 17th birthday and served for nine years in the infantry and military police while simultaneously going to college in Springfield, Missouri and then to graduate school outside Chicago, Illinois.

After graduating magna cum laude, Dan worked in the non- profit sector as a public policy expert for 18 years before deciding to run for elected office and becoming an Illinois State Senator.

In 2007, Dan was in a hit-and-run accident that left him with a spinal cord injury and no use of his legs. Undeterred from his quest to make the world a better place, he was the first paraplegic to win a state-level office in Illinois when he ran for the Illinois Senate in 2016. There he championed a myriad of issues including fiscal responsibility and expanded accessibility for the disabled.

After serving nearly a decade in office and rising to the position of Minority Leader in the Illinois State Senate, Senator McConchie started the Accessibility Policy Institute to take his quest to champion accessibility rights nationwide.

The Accessibility Policy Institute is a national organization dedicated to improving accessibility for the disabled at every level. They promote federal, state, and local policies that remove barriers so every disabled person has the opportunity to LIVE, WORK, and THRIVE.

Dan’s wife, Milena, passed away in February 2025 from health complications due to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. He resides in Hawthorn Woods, Illinois and has two adult children.

Mike Pence was born in Columbus, Indiana into a family that epitomized the American Dream, instilling in him values of hard work, faith, and family. After graduating from Hanover College and Indiana University School of Law, he embarked on a multifaceted career, including law practice, hosting a talk show, serving as a Congressman for six terms, and championing limited government and fiscal responsibility. Pence then was elected the 50th Governor of Indiana, focusing on tax cuts, job creation, education reform, and infrastructure investment while maintaining fiscal responsibility. His accomplishments in Indiana led to his selection as the 48th Vice President of the United States. Pence’s conservative philosophy, inspired by Ronald Reagan, led to his founding Advancing American Freedom which continues to advocate for faith, family, and liberty as foundational American values.

Dominic Pino is an editorial writer for The Washington Post Opinion section. Before joining The Post in 2025, he was the Thomas L. Rhodes Journalism Fellow at National Review Institute. He was previously a William F. Buckley Jr. Fellow in Political Journalism and a National Review editorial intern. He holds a master’s degree and bachelor’s degree in economics from George Mason University and was an MA Fellow at the Mercatus Center. During college, he was opinion editor of Fourth Estate, Mason’s student paper. He was a 2020 Political Studies Fellow with the Hertog Foundation and has had past internships with ALEC, The Heritage Foundation, and Tax Foundation. Originally from Wisconsin, he currently resides in Fairfax, Virginia.

Roger Ream is president and CEO of The Fund for American Studies (TFAS). He joined TFAS in 1991 as executive vice president and became president in 1998. He is also an alumnus of the 1976 Public Policy + Economics Program. During his tenure, TFAS has grown significantly in the U.S. and internationally, offering programs for high school and college students, teachers and young professionals. In 2013, TFAS merged with Foundation for Teaching Economics and more recently added a wide array of journalism programs.

Ream serves on the boards of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the Bradley Impact Fund. He is a member of the U.S. Postal Service’s Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee. He is on the advisory board of Talent Market and a member of Sons of the American Revolution. He previously served on the boards of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the U.S. Air Force Academy Superintendent’s Leadership Fund. He is a founding member of the Frank S. Meyer Society, past president of the Philadelphia Society and a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.

In 2021, Ream was awarded a Bradley Prize by the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, in recognition of his “outstanding achievements toward strengthening and protecting the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism.” In 2024, he was awarded the Baron Award from the Philadelphia Society.

Ream’s writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, the Washington Times, the Washington Examiner, Politico and other publications. He is the host of the Liberty & Leadership Podcast.

Roger and his late wife, Mary Kay, have three daughters and six grandchildren.

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute. 

 Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report. 

 Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.  

Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/​adviser to the Multi-​National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School. 

Matthew Spalding is the Kirby Professor in Constitutional Government and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College and oversees the Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship at Hillsdale’s Washington, D.C. campus. His new book, The Making of the American Mind: The Story of Our Declaration of Independence, was released in December 2025.

Spalding is also the best-selling author of We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future and the original executive editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, the first line-by-line analysis of each clause of the U.S. Constitution. Appointed executive director of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission, which produced The 1776 Report, he is currently a senior academic advisor for America250 projects.

Prior to joining Hillsdale, Spalding was vice president for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation and founding director of its B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics. He is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy and serves on the boards of The Steamboat Institute, Faith & Law, the James Wilson Institute, and New College of Florida.

He received his BA from Claremont McKenna College and his MA and PhD from the Claremont Graduate School.

Ted Tucker brings more than 20 years of management and marketing experience to the education leadership space. A firm believer in the power of the economic way of thinking, Ted continuously looks for innovative opportunities to educate individuals, both Americans and citizens from around the world, on how embracing this thinking will enrich their lives. 

As the executive director of TFAS’s high school programs, the  Foundation for Teaching Economics (FTE), Ted has delivered significant revenue and enrollment growth by incorporating data-driven marketing, diversifying programming, and most importantly, managing a highly motivated and productive team. Before joining FTE, he served as the associate director of the Center for Language Studies at Beloit College. 

Ted received his master’s degree from Kansas State University, his bachelor’s from UC Davis and his teaching certificate from Rockford College. He and his wife, Jennifer, are currently raising young two boys, which Ted considers his most important responsibility.