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.

James R. Russo is an independent researcher who holds graduate degrees from Louisiana State University and the University of Richmond. He has taught at those schools and at Tulane University. Russo’s primary scholarly interests are the cinema and comparative literature. He has recently published Film Nation: William Troy on the Cinema, 1933–1935; The Bookman: William Troy on Literature and Criticism, 1927–1950; Drama According to Alexander Bakshy, 1916-1946; Analyzing Film: A Student Casebook; Pillars of Society: Ibsen, Shaw, Brecht; and Open Hatch: The Theater Criticism of Robert Hatch, 1950-1970.

Ann G. Simonds is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of Oregon, Eugene. She has published articles in various anthropological journals and extensively studied Franz Boas’s works on the Northwest Coast.

Richard L. Bland is a retired Arctic archaeologist and translator. He has translated over 250 articles and books, primarily from Russian and German, into English. Recent examples with Academica Press include The Peoples of Ancient Siberia: An Archeological History (by A. P. Okladnikov) and Warfare in the Russian Arctic (A. K. Nefedkin).

Don Dumond served as Director of the Museum of Natural History at the University of Oregon. He has more than 100 substantive publications in journals, plus fourteen authored or co-authored books.

David Roman was born in Madrid in 1973. After a long career as a foreign correspondent with the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News, mostly in the Asia-Pacific region, he started work on Emperor Whisperers, his first non-fiction book. He is married with two children and currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Alexander Ross graduated from the University of Cambridge and studied at the ESCP Business School in Paris and Heidelberg University. He later moved to Los Angeles, where he worked in film for fifteen years before returning to the UK to obtain a Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia, as well as an M.A. in biographical writing. Ross recently contributed to an anthology of essays about the film Grease. He is presently based at New College, Oxford, and acts as a consultant to the EACEA (European Union Education, Audiovisual, and Culture Executive Agency MEDIA Program).

William Ehwarieme is Professor of Political Science and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Ajayi Crowther University, in Nigeria. He obtained his B.S. and M.S. in Political Science from the University of Nigeria, Nsuka, and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Ibadan. He served as Vice President of the African Studies and Research Forum in 2012-2014.

Nathaniel Umukoro is Professor of International Security, Peace Studies, and Conflict Resolution in the Department of Political Science, Western Delta University, Nigeria. He is currently Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Bayreuth, in Germany. He completed his Ph.D. in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Ibadan in 2015. He was a fellow of the Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Unit of the Social Science Research Council, in New York. He has received additional training in Education in Emergencies (2017) and Peace Education and Transitional Justice (2015) from the Georg Eckert Institute, Germany; Development and Inequality in the Global South from Brown University, and Mixed-Method Research from the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research, in Nairobi, Kenya.

Thomas E. Meurer is a retired business executive whose good fortune has allowed for careers and experiences in nearly all of his areas of interest: competitive sports, the military, teaching, politics, diplomacy, agriculture, venture capital, natural history, science, oil, gas, and dozens of practical jokes. Over the last 55 years, He has done business in 47 countries, several of which no longer exist.

Paul Krause is the editor-in-chief of VoegelinView. He was educated at Baldwin Wallace University, Yale Divinity School, and the University of Buckingham, where he studied with Sir Roger Scruton. His writings on the arts, classics, literature, politics, philosophy, and religion have appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines, and journals. He is the author of The Odyssey of Love and contributed to The College Lecture Today and Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters.

“Paul Krause has written a beautiful and accessible commentary on the Greeks, Romans, and Saint Augustine, illuminating the wisdom of the ancients for a contemporary audience. Rather than engaging in an anachronistic reading of these works, Krause uncover the enduring truths that these authors offer us today.”
– Lee Trepanier, Samford University

“Paul Krause is a wonderful communicator who encourages readers to lovingly appreciate the classics of Western literature regardless of the modern criticism leveled at such an endeavor. As Augustine told us to take up and read, Krause does the same by making this process an exercise in timelessness. This book is highly recommended to anyone seeking a deeper grasp of the enduring wisdom and rich texture of these seminal works of Western civilization.”
– Scott Meyer, George W. Truett Theological Seminary

“Paul Krause rightly notes that his book is intended to defend the classics against their increasingly ungrateful critics, but its real joy is in revisiting so many timeless works through his lens of love, which speaks to all of us.”
– Erich Prince, Editor of Merion West

“Paul Krause is a trustworthy guide to the enduring wisdom of the classics. His book orients readers to an ancient conversation about what it means to be human, the nature of the good life, and the shape of healthy human society. This is the ballast that can steady us as we engage in contemporary debates about these same questions”
– Jeffrey Bilbro, Grove City College

Nils A. Haug is a trial lawyer by profession and member of the International Bar Association, the National Association of Scholars, and a faculty member of Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Retired from law to focus on writing and teaching, his particular field of interest is the intersection of Western culture with political theory, philosophy, theology, English literature, ethics, and law. Dr. Haug holds various degrees including an M.A.(cum laude) in Biblical Studies and Ph.D. in Theology (Apologetics).

Robert Hauptman is Professor Emeritus of Information Science at St. Cloud State University. His nearly 700 publications include 18 books (the 19th, The Desert Encyclopedia, is forthcoming in 2024) and cover innumerable topics. At 81, he still walks many miles almost every day and climbs mountains. He has stood on the highest point of 45 American states.