Abraham Lincoln Teachers Fellowship

Dean Harry Ballan

The Tikvah Fund

Harry Ballan is Senior Director of the Tikvah Fund and Founding Dean of both the Tikvah Online Academy and the Abraham Lincoln Teachers Fellowship. Dr. Ballan holds a BA, MA, MPhil, and PhD from Yale University and a JD from Columbia Law School. He clerked for Chief Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and was for many years a Partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, a leading international law firm where he is currently Senior Counsel. He has taught at several leading universities on subjects ranging from law and intellectual history to neuroscience, and was Dean of Touro Law School before joining Tikvah.

Prof. Wilfred M. McClay

University of Oklahoma

Wilfred M. McClay is the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma, and the Director of the Center for the History of Liberty. His book The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America was awarded the 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, and Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.

Prof. McClay served on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities, for eleven years. He is a member of the U.S. Commission on the Semi-quincentennial, 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. He is a graduate of St. John's College (Annapolis) and received his PhD in History from the Johns Hopkins University.

Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik

Yeshiva University and Congregation Shearith Israel

Rabbi Dr. Meir Y. Soloveichik is director of the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and the rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. Rabbi Soloveichik has lectured throughout the United States, in Europe, and in Israel to both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences on topics relating to Jewish theology, bioethics, wartime ethics, and Jewish-Christian relations. His essays on these subjects have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, First Things, Azure, Tradition, and the Torah U-Madda Journal. In August 2012, he gave the invocation at the opening session of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. He is the son of Rabbi Eliyahu Soloveichik, grandson of the late Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik, and the great-nephew of the late Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

Dr. Leon R. Kass

University of Chicago and the American Enterprise Institute

Leon R. Kass, MD, PhD, is the Addie Clark Harding Professor Emeritus in the Committee on Social Thought and the College at the University of Chicago and the Madden-Jewett Scholar Emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute. He was chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005. His numerous articles and books include: Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs, The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature, Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying (with Amy A. Kass), Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song (with Amy A. Kass and Diana Schaub), Leading a Worthy Life: Finding Meaning in Modern Times, and (forthcoming) Founding God's Nation: Reading Exodus.

Prof. Diana Schaub

Loyola University Maryland and the American Enterprise Institute

Diana J. Schaub is a professor of political science at Loyola University Maryland, where she has taught for almost three decades, as well as a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where her work is focused on American political thought, history, and the relevance of core American ideals to contemporary challenges and debates. An expert in political philosophy, Dr. Schaub lectures on a variety of topics and has contributed chapters to multiple books on Shakespeare, liberal education, women, and religion. She is the author of two books: What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song, coedited with Amy and Leon Kass, and Erotic Liberalism: Women and Revolution in Montesquieu’s ‘Persian Letters’. Dr. Schaub has also been published in the popular press, including in The Baltimore Sun, the Claremont Review of Books, Commentary, The Wall Street Journal, and The Weekly Standard.

Prof. Jonathan D. Sarna

Brandeis University

Prof. Jonathan D. Sarna is University Professor and the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, where he directs its Schusterman Center for Israel Studies. He also is the past president of the Association for Jewish Studies and Chief Historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. Author or editor of more than thirty books on American Jewish history and life, his American Judaism: A History—recently published in a second edition—won six awards including the 2004 “Everett Jewish Book of the Year Award” from the Jewish Book Council. Sarna is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy of Jewish Research. His most recent books are When General Grant Expelled the Jews, Lincoln & the Jews: A History (with Benjamin Shapell), and an edition of Cosella Wayne, by Cora Wilburn, the first (and hitherto unknown) American Jewish novel.