Pano Kanelos – president
Was president of St John’s College in Annapolis from 2017 until June 30, 2021.
Peter Boghossian – founding faculty fellow
Boghossian was an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University until he resigned in September, citing a lack of academic freedom.
He was known for inviting a variety of controversial speakers to class, including, he said, ‘Flat-Earthers’, climate change skeptics and advocates of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
He was also known – and ultimately forced out – for writing a series of hoax academic papers on topics from canine ‘rape culture’ in dog parks, to ‘fat bodybuilding’ to an adaption of Mein Kampf. Boghossian said he did it to show how anything can get academic approval in journals, if the peers reviewing it shared the biases of the authors.
He was found by his institutional review board to have committed research misconduct.
Kathleen Stock – founding faculty fellow
The British professor of philosophy resigned in October from her post at the University of Sussex, following a relentless three-year campaign of what she said was bullying, harassment and character assassination.
Stock defines herself as a gender-critical feminist, meaning she believes that biological sex matters. She argues that being born a woman carries certain rights that should not automatically be extended to anyone who identifies as that gender.
She was accused of transphobia for her work on gender and sex, and resigned amid a volley of death threats and protest.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali – founding faculty fellow
A Somali-born Dutch American commentator, who is best known for her criticism of Islam, calling it ‘a nihilistic cult of death’. Born into a Muslim family, she was forced into genital mutilation as a child in Somalia, then fled to the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage, and now describes herself as ‘an infidel’.
She told the National Conservatism Conference this year that ‘wokeism’ is ‘the ideology that threatens us today, and has the potential to ruin our societies.’
She is married to historian Niall Ferguson and teaches at the Hoover Institute.
Niall Ferguson – board of advisors
Scottish-born Ferguson has taught history at Harvard, Oxford, London School of Economics and New York University.
He is known for his positive views on the British Empire, and his support for the Iraq War.
He, like his wife Ayaan Hirsi Ali, currently teaches at the Hoover Institute.
Andrew Sullivan – board of advisors
Sullivan, a British-American journalist, was editor of The New Republic.
He began writing columns in New York Magazine in 2016, criticizing the Left. But his outlandish theories about race being linked to IQ saw him lose the contract, and set out on his own with a Substack newsletter.
Larry Summers – board of advisors
Summers served as treasury secretary from 1998 to 2001, and was president of Harvard University from 2001-6.
In 2005, he sparked anger by arguing that men outperform women in maths and sciences because of biological difference, and discrimination is no longer a career barrier for female academics. He resigned a year later.
Barack Obama appointed him director of the National Economic Council.
David Mamet – board of advisors
The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright – best known for Speed the Plow, Glengarry Glen Ross and Oleanna, and films such as Hannibal – is known for his rejection of political correctness.
He was openly supportive of Donald Trump, and strongly pro-Israel.
Dorian Abbot – board of advisors
Abbot, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago, was disinvited from speaking on scientific research at MIT because of his political views.
Abbot has argued that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs are unethical and detract from a university’s principal mission.
Bari Weiss – board of advisors
Weiss was an opinion editor at The New York Times until her resignation in June 2020, following an angry exchange about an op ed written by Senator Tom Cotton.
Cotton argued that, in the midst of the George Floyd protests, Trump should send in the troops to quell the unrest. Some New York Times journalists were furious at the op ed, calling it provocative and dangerous.
Weiss resigned, accusing them of being against freedom of speech. She also said that she had been bullied for her center-right views at the paper.