NAS Blog

Daniel Asia
Daniel Asia has been an eclectic and unique composer from the start. He has enjoyed the usual grants from Meet the Composer, a UK Fulbright award, Guggeneheim Fellowship, MacDowell and Tanglewood fellowships, DAAD Fellowship, Copland Fund grants, and numerous others. From 1991-1994 he was Composer- in Residence of the Phoenix Symphony, and from 1977-1995 Music Director of the New York-based contemporary ensemble Musical Elements. He has been Professor of Music at the University of Arizona since 1988 and he is the president of the Arizona affiliate of the National Association of Scholars.

Asia’s five symphonies have received wide acclaim from live performance and their international recordings.  Under a  recent Barlow Endowment grant, he is presently writing for The Czech Nonet, the longest continuously performing chamber ensemble on the planet, founded in 1924.

The recorded works of Daniel Asia may be heard on the labels of Summit, New World, and Albany. For further information, visit www.danielasia.net.

King Banaian
Dr. Banaian is professor and chairman of the Economics Department of St. Cloud State University.  He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Claremont Graduate School.  He has consulted at the central banks of Ukraine, Egypt and Macedonia and the ministries of finance of Indonesia, Macedonia and Armenia.  He is author of The Ukrainian Economy since Independence (Edward Elgar, 1998), co-editor of The Design and Use of Political Economy Indicators (Palgrave, 2008) and more than thirty-five articles and book chapters discussing monetary policy and political economy. He directs the Center for Economic Education at SCSU.  He is senior policy fellow at the Minnesota Free Market Institute in Minneapolis and a fellow of the Armenian International Policy Research Group in Washington, DC and Yerevan, Armenia.  He is also host of a talk radio program and co-author of the St. Cloud Quarterly Business Report.  He lives in St. Cloud, Minnesota, with his wife and daughter, and he blogs at SCSU Scholars.

Stephen Beale
Stephen Beale joined the Ocean State Policy Research Institute in September 2009. From 2006 to 2009, he was a correspondent for the Union Leader in Manchester, where he covered the 2008 presidential primary campaign as well as crime, education, economic development, and local news. His work has been published on ABCNews.com and MSNBC.com as well as in Parable Magazine and the Providence Journal. Stephen has also appeared as a guest on C-SPAN and The Today Show. Prior to 2006, Stephen was a research consultant with the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research in Indianapolis. Stephen graduated from Brown University in 2004 with a degree in classics and history. At Brown, he founded The Brown Spectator and was a columnist for the Brown Daily Herald. He also founded The Foundation for Intellectual Diversity at Brown and serves on its board of directors.

Jonathan Bean
Dr. Bean is the president of the Illinois affiliate of the National Association of Scholars. He is the author of Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader (University Press of Kentucky, in association with The Independent Institute, 2009). He is a professor of history at Southern Illinois University and a research fellow of the Independent Institute. He writes for the Beacon Blog at the Independent Institute and started his own blog, FreeU, which covers topics and current events in higher education, with emphasis on Southern Illinois University (SIU).

Alex Berezow
Alex Berezow is a microbiology Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington.  He earned his bachelor’s degree in microbiology from Southern Illinois University, where he also wrote a political column for the school newspaper, The Daily Egyptian.  He currently serves as a leader in the Forum on Science, Ethics, and Policy at the UW and is the author of a new science policy blog called Blind Science.  In his spare time, he enjoys reading, coffee shops, and traveling to Europe with his wife.

Jay Bergman
Dr. Bergman is the chairman of the Connecticut affiliate of the National Association of Scholars and is a member of the NAS board of directors. He teaches history at Central Connecticut State University. His teaching interests include modern Russian history, modern European history, and intellectual history. He is the author of Vera Zasulich: A Biography (Stanford University Press, 1983), Meeting the Demands of Reason: The Life and Thought of Andrei Sakharov (Cornell University Press, 2009) and articles in Russian political and intellectual history. In 2009 he was named a member of the Connecticut Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, serving a term of two years.

David Clemens
David Clemens is the founder and coordinator of the Monterey Peninsula College Great Books Certificate Program.  He publishes in the scholarly and popular press, most recently the San Francisco Chronicle, Inside English, Community College Advocate, Reading at Risk:  A Forum, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.  He also appears in the documentary film Indoctrinate U.  He has designed three online classes:  “Introduction to Great Books,” “Literature By and About Men,” and “More, or Less, Than Human?” which considers literary and cinematic speculations about the convergence of artificial intelligence and human intelligence.  In 2006, he received the Allen Griffin Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Candace de Russy
Candace de Russy serves as treasurer of the National Association of Scholars board of directors. She is a nationally recognized expert on education and cultural issues. A former college professor with a doctorate in French from Tulane University, she was appointed to the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Air Force Academy by President George W. Bush in 2002. De Russy has been published in The Chronicle of Higher Education , Inside Higher Ed , Academic Questions , the New York Post , theNew York Sun and other publications. She serves on the Ave Maria University board of regents, and is currently a member of the trustees council of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. She serves on the advisory boards of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Educationand the Independent Women’s Forum. From 2004-2009 she served as an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., where she focused on academic standards, assessment, governance, strategic planning, accountability, funding and other issues in higher education. She is the chairman of Democracy Project, a grassroots institution that supports pro-democracy efforts around the world.

William Felkner
William Felkner is the founder and CEO of the Ocean State Policy Research Institute, coordinator of the Center-Right Coalition, and president of the Rhode Island Association of Scholars. Mr. Felkner was a board member for Heritage of Rhode Island and the Chariho Regional School Committee. He currently serves on the Hopkinton Town Council and was an organizing advisor for the RI Tea Party.

Brian Johnson
Brian Johnson is a freelance writer, reporting and commenting on political, cultural and academic affairs for the NAS Blog and his personal website, Principally Political. He earned a BA in political science from the University of Missouri, and has worked on local, state and national level election campaigns and policy issues in the Show-Me State. His interests include volunteer tutoring at the elementary school level, playing classical piano sonatas and competing in short form triathlons.

Rob Koons
Rob Koons specializes in philosophical logic and in the application of logic to long-standing philosophical problems, including metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics, and philosophy of religion. His book Paradoxes of Belief and Strategic Rationality (Cambridge, 1992) received the Aarlt Prize. His latest book is Realism Regained (Oxford, 2000). He and Yale’s George Bealer are co-editors of a new volume on the philosophy of mind to be published in 2010 by Oxford, The Waning of Materialism. Koons studied philosophy at Michigan State, Oxford, and UCLA, and he has taught philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin since 1987. From 2006-2008, Koons was the director of the now-defunct Program in Western Civilization and American Institutions. He is a senator of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, president of the Texas Association of Scholars, a member of executive committee of the Society of Christian Philosophers, and a senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute.

Michael Krauss
Michael Krauss has taught at the George Mason University School of Law since 1987. He teaches Torts, Products Liability, Legal Ethics, and Legal Philosophy, and he has a strong interest in national security issues. In 1994, he became the law school’s first and only recipient of the university’s “Teacher of the Year” award for his engaging and challenging approach in the classroom. Professor Krauss is a member of the National Association of Scholars Board of Directors, and in 2008 he was elected to full membership in the American Law Institute. From 1999-2004 he served on the Board of Governors of the Education Section of the Virginia State Bar. He co-authored the first edition of Legal Ethics in a Nutshell in May 2003 and the second edition in 2006. Professor Krauss is under contract with West Publications to produce an innovative textbook on Products Liability in 2010.

Mitchell Langbert
Mitchell Langbert is associate professor at Brooklyn College, a campus of the City University of New York. He holds a Ph.D. from the Columbia Business School, an MBA from UCLA and an AB from Sarah Lawrence College. Prior to his academic career he worked in the corporate world for Johnson and Johnson and Inco Ltd. He has served as expert witness on a number of ERISA-related cases, including In Re Tittle et al. v. Enron et al.  He is the author of articles on the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and other human resource management- and education-related subjects.  His articles have appeared in Journal of Economic Issues, Journal of Labor Research, Academy of Management Learning and Education Journal, Journal of Business Ethics, Human Resource Management, Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Academic Questions, Journal of Management History, the New York Sun, Frontpagemag, Inside Higher Education and the Times Herald Record.

George Leef
George Leef is director of research for the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from Carroll College (Waukesha, WI) and a juris doctor from Duke University School of Law. He was a vice president of the John Locke Foundation until the Pope Center became independent in 2003. Prior to joining the Locke Foundation, he was president of Patrick Henry Associates, a consulting firm in Michigan dedicated to assisting others in advocating free markets, minimal government, private property, and individual rights. He has served as book review editor of The Freeman, an educational free market magazine published by the Foundation for Economic Education, since 1997, and has published numerous articles in The Freeman, Reason, The Free Market, Cato Journal, The Detroit News, Independent Review, and Regulation.

Herbert London
Herbert London is the president of the Hudson Institute and a noted social critic whose work has appeared in nearly every major newspaper and journal, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.  Dr. London is professor emeritus and former John M. Olin Professor of Humanities at New York University. He is also a contributing editor for the St. Croix Review, and is the author or editor of twenty-one books, including Decade of Denial (Lexington Books) and America’s Secular Challenge (Encounter Books). Dr. London serves on the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars.

Glenn Ricketts

Glenn Ricketts is NAS Public Affairs Director and joined the staff in Princeton in September, 1989.  He is also a member of the NAS Board of Directors, where he has served since 1990, and was the founding president of  the NAS New Jersey affiliate, which he headed for ten years.   A graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, he received his Ph.D in Political Science from the University of Chicago.  He is professor of Political Science at Raritan Valley Community College in Somerville, New Jersey, where has taught since 1982.

Andrew Spiropoulos
Professor Spiropoulos is the president of the Oklahoma affiliate of the National Association of Scholars. He is a professor of Law and director of the Center for the Study of State Constitutional Law and Government at Oklahoma City University. From 2005-2006 he was the Senior Counselor to the Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, where his duties included serving as chief policy advisor and negotiator.  He has been a Heritage Foundation Salvatori Fellow and is an adjunct scholar with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. He was the reporter for the Uniform Interstate Enforcement of Domestic-Violence Protection Orders Act.

Ashley Thorne
Ashley Thorne is the director of communications for the National Association of Scholars. She writes frequently about issues in higher education at www.nas.org. She received her undergraduate degree in politics, philosophy, and economics from The King’s College in 2007. She lives in Jersey City, New Jersey with her husband, and her interests include traveling to Russia, learning foreign languages, and reading.

Peter Wood
Peter Wood is the president of the National Association of Scholars. He is the author of A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now (Encounter Books, 2007) and of Diversity: The Invention of a Concept (Encounter Books, 2003) which won the Caldwell Award for Leadership in Higher Education from the John Locke Foundation. He is a graduate of Haverford College, Rutgers University, and the University of Rochester, from which he received a Ph.D. in anthropology in 1987. He previously served as provost of The King’s College in New York City, and as associate provost and the president’s chief of staff at Boston University, where he was also a tenured member of the anthropology department. His essays on American culture have appeared in The National Review Online, Partisan Review, Frontpage Magazine, Minding the Campus, The Claremont Review of Books, The American Conservative, Society and other journals.