Robert R. Reilly has written about classical music for more than 35 years and is the author of Surprised by Beauty: A Listener's Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music. He was the music critic for Crisis magazine for 16 years, and has written for High Fidelity, Musical America, Schwann/Opus, and the American Record Guide. He reviews concerts and operas in the United States and Europe for Ionarts and Seen and Heard International. In his 25 years in government, he served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the White House under President Ronald Reagan, and the United States Information Agency. He was also the director of Voice of America. He has published widely on foreign policy and “war of ideas” issues and is the author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind, America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding, and other books. He is the director of the Westminster Institute in Vienna, Virginia.

Jens F. Laurson received his formative musical experiences at the hands of tapes of the Bach Passions his father made for him, a Haydn audio-biography for kids, and singing Rheinberger Masses as a chorister in Regensburg, Germany. He has branched out since, becoming a musical omnivore. A political scientist by training, and critic and translator by trade, he has written about classical music for the Washington Post, Forbes, the Wiener Zeitung, and ClassicsToday, among other publications. He received an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. He shares his daily listening diet as @ClassicalCritic on Twitter and Instagram

Jose Martinez, Ph.D. is Professor of Sociology (ret.) at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. He is the author of Inequality in American Education: The Entrenchment of a Two-Tiered System; Diversity, Funding, and Standardized Testing in American Education; Covid-19 and the Transformation of American Society; and Football in American Society. He has contributed chapters in texts such as Diversity in the Workforce. Dr. Martinez holds degrees in education, history, and psychology, and his doctorate is in sociology. He has taught for over thirty years. The media calls on him regarding social issues, and he was a regular co-host on the PBS program Hispanic Perspectives. He also has held administrative and other positions in agencies at all levels: the federal, state, county, local, and school district.

Kawal Deep Kour holds a Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. A drug abuse prevention specialist, she is currently Director of the South Asian Drugs and Addictions Research Council and a former board member of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP). She is the author of History of Intoxication: Opium in Assam, 1800-1959 and many other publications.

Kawal Deep Kour holds a Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. A drug abuse prevention specialist, she is currently Director of the South Asian Drugs and Addictions Research Council and a former board member of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP). She is the author of History of Intoxication: Opium in Assam, 1800-1959 and many other publications.

Lawrence Goldstone is the author or co-author of two dozen books of both fiction and non-fiction, six with his wife Nancy. He has written extensively on Constitutional law and equal rights. His On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravishing of African American Voting Rights won the highly prestigious Lillian Smith Book Award. Other books include Inherently Unequal: The Betrayal of Equal Rights by the Supreme Court, 1865-1903; Dark Bargain: Slavery Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution; and The Activist: John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, and the Myth of Judicial Review. He currently writes a weekly opinion column for The Fulcrum. Goldstone’s fiction has also been highly praised. His first novel, Rights, won a New American Writing Award, and his third, Anatomy of Deception, was a New York Times notable mystery. Goldstone has been widely interviewed on both radio and television, with appearances on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, To the Best of Our Knowledge, and The Faith Middleton Show; The Takeaway (PRI); Make It Plain with Mark Thompson (SiriusXM); Tavis Smiley (PBS); and CSPAN’s BookTV. Goldstone’s work has been profiled in The New York Times, The Toronto Star, Salon, Slate, and numerous regional newspapers. His articles, reviews, and opinion pieces have appeared in, among other periodicals, The Atlantic, New Republic, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Salon, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, Hartford Courant, and Berkshire Eagle. Goldstone holds a Ph.D. in constitutional history from the New School.

Ralph G. Giordano is a professional architect born in New York. Recently retired to New Jersey, he has authored nine books on American culture and served as a series editor for six other innovative publications. Giordano is a member of the Authors Guild. He earned a master’s degree from the City University of New York and a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the New York Institute of Technology. Giordano’s work has been featured in The New York Times and New York Daily News, among other publications. In 2007, he was honored with the prestigious Council of the Arts Humanities Award on Staten Island (COAHSI), recognizing his long commitment to the arts and humanities within New York City. Inducted into the College of Staten Island Alumni Hall of Fame, an additional honor came with the President’s Dolphin Award for Outstanding Service and Contribution to the College of Staten Island. Faculty Appreciation Awards for excellence in teaching came from Student/Athletes of Kean University in New Jersey and the Student/Athletes at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). He has taught as an adjunct professor in various disciplines of World History, American Studies, and Architecture at the College of Staten Island, Wagner College, Kean University, and Union County College. In 2011, he was featured in a BBC Radio documentary and has been guest on many other radio programs.

Henry F. Fradella is Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, where he also holds affiliate appointments in law and in the interdisciplinary studies program on law and behavioral science. He received a B.A. in psychology from Clark University; a master’s in forensic science and a law degree from George Washington University; and his Ph.D. in justice studies from Arizona State University. He researches substantive and procedural criminal law, the dynamics of legal decision-making, and the consequences of changes in legal processes. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice. He is the author or co-author of 12 books including Punishing Poverty: How Bail and Pretrial Detention Fuel Inequalities in the Criminal Justice System; Stop and Frisk: The Use and Abuse of a Controversial Police Tactic; Sex, Sexuality, Law, and (In)Justice; Mental Illness and Crime; Defenses of Excuse in American Law; a criminal law casebook; and four textbooks. He had written nearly 120 articles, book chapters, reviews, and scholarly commentaries. Dr. Fradella previously edited Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society and the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Law Bulletin since 2019.

Emrah Akyüz is Associate Professor of Environmental Policy and Energy Politics at Bingol University, in Turkey, where he has taught since 2020. He completed his master’s degree at Edinburgh University with a thesis on “urban social movements” and received his Ph.D. from the University of Leeds with a thesis on the effects of the Fukushima and Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accidents on human rights. Dr. Akyüz conducts scientific research on environmental and energy policy. His books include Nuclear Power and Human Rights in Japan: The Fallout of Fukushima, 100 Unknown Scientific Facts on Environmental Issues, Save the World: Clean Environment Scientific Secrets, ABC of Environmental Science: Environmental Issues and Policies for Beginners, Environment and Human Rights: A Study on Turkey, City and Urbanization with Its Different Dimensions (ed.), Environmental Justice, and Environmental Ethics and Spinoza (ed.), and Nuclear Energy: Perception or Reality?.

Dr. Juliana Geran Pilon is Senior Fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. Among her books are The Utopian Conceit and the War on Freedom, The Art of Peace: Engaging a Complex World, Soulmates: Resurrecting Eve, Why America is Such a Hard Sell, and Notes from the Other Side of Night. The author of over 250 articles and reviews on international affairs, human rights, literature, and philosophy, her writings have recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Liberty, the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), Academic Questions, InFocus, Starting Points, Doc Emet Productions, the American Mind, and the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, among others. Born in Romania, she emigrated with her family and arrived in the U.S. as a teenager. In the 1990s she was Vice President for Programs at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), where she designed, conducted, and managed projects related to a wide variety of democratization projects.

Leslie Gruis served at the National Security Agency for 30 years. Originally recruited as a mathematician with a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, Dr. Gruis was talent-spotted for her people and policy-setting skills and rapidly became a rising star. She ascended through the ranks, became the head of an organization that funded start-ups for classified applications, and then entered the high-level policy arena just as the intelligence community began to face unprecedented privacy challenges. These included the role of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court in targeting Americans and major changes to the intelligence community forced by the privacy revelations of whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Dr. Gruis’s long-standing interests in the rights of Americans and the American dream coalesced in a deep interest in privacy as a concept. She influenced intelligence community policy on privacy for the rights of Americans and wrote a number of classified policy documents on that subject. Upon retirement, Dr. Gruis began a second career writing about the privacy rights of the American public. She focused on what Americans are entitled to know and what can be done to protect them from exploitation by giant commercial organizations. Dr. Gruis is the author of Privacy: Past, Present, and Future. She also writes for traditional and online media, appears on radio and television, and gives frequent public appearances. Dr. Gruis lives in Maryland with her family.