The Honorable Elliott Abrams is the chairman of Tikvah, as well as chairman of the Vandenberg Coalition and senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. He served as special assistant to the president and NSC senior director for the Near East and North Africa in the first term of George W. Bush, and as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the second. In the Trump administration, he served in the State Department as special representative for Iran and for Venezuela. He is the author of Undue Process (1993), Security and Sacrifice (1995), Faith or Fear (1997), Tested by Zion (2013), and Realism and Democracy: American Foreign Policy After the Arab Spring (2017), and writes widely on U.S. foreign policy, with special focus on the Middle East and issues of democracy and human rights. His most recent book is If You Will It: Rebuilding Jewish Peoplehood for the 21st Century.

Eric Cohen is the CEO of Tikvah, which he has led since 2007, and co-chairman of the Jewish Leadership Conference. He is the publisher of Mosaic and also serves on the board of directors of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and National Affairs. He was the founding editor of the New Atlantis and the founding publisher of the Jewish Review of Books. Mr. Cohen has published in numerous academic and popular journals, magazines, and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Mosaic, Commentary, the Weekly Standard, the New Republic, and First Things. He is the author of In the Shadow of Progress: Being Human in the Age of Technology (2008) and co-editor of The Future is Now: America Confronts the New Genetics (2002). He was previously managing editor of the Public Interest and served as a senior consultant to the President’s Council on Bioethics.

Dr. Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. Haidt’s research examines the intuitive foundations of morality and how moral thinking varies across cultural and political divisions. Haidt is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis (2006) and of the New York Times bestsellers The Righteous Mind (2012) and The Coddling of the American Mind (2018, with Greg Lukianoff).  He has given four TED talks. In 2019 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2018 he has been studying the contributions of social media to the decline of teen mental health and the rise of political dysfunction, which is the subject of his most recent book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. His next book will be titled, Life After Babel: Adapting to a World We Can No Longer Share.

Nikki R. Haley is the Walter P. Stern Chair at the Hudson Institute. She previously served as United States ambassador to the United Nations, as a member of the president’s cabinet, and on the National Security Council. While ambassador, she ensured the American people saw value for their investment, defended US interests, kept our country safe, and championed human rights. On the UN Security Council, Amb. Haley spearheaded negotiations that led to the strongest set of sanctions ever placed on a country, North Korea, for its nuclear weapons program. She proudly issued the first American veto in years defending the United States’ sovereign right to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Israel’s true capital. And, during her presidency of the UN Security Council, she hosted the first-ever session devoted to promoting human rights. For Amb. Haley’s work at the UN, Forbes named her one of the world’s 100 most powerful women.

Prior to becoming UN ambassador, she was elected the 116th governor of South Carolina. Haley led the state through some of its most difficult periods—forging unity and consensus in the wake of a racially-driven church shooting, signing the first body camera bill in the country, and managing South Carolina’s emergency response during multiple natural disasters.

William Inboden is professor and director of the Alexander Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, and Peterson Senior Fellow with the Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He previously served as William Powers, Jr. Chair and executive director of the Clements Center for National Security, associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and distinguished scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, all at the University of Texas-Austin. He also served as senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council at the White
House.

Inboden’s newest book is The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink (2022), an award-winning narrative overview of the Reagan
administration’s Cold War strategy and foreign and defense policies. He is also the author of Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of Containment (2008). Inboden is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and his commentary has appeared in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Foreign Policy, Politico, National Review, NPR, CNN, and the BBC.

Shabbos Kestenbaum is a recent graduate of Harvard University and the lead plaintiff in a suit against the school alleging severe and pervasive anti-Semitism on campus. He is a regular contributor in international media outlets, including Fox, CNN, and the BBC, and recently addressed the 2024 Republican National Convention. He has testified before Congress and speaks internationally about campus anti-Semitism, higher education reform, and the bipartisan U.S.-Israel relationship. Shabbos has been involved with Tikvah
since high school and is an alumnus of numerous Tikvah programs and fellowships.

Dr. Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at the New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times. Dr. Levin served as a member of the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush, and was also executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics. In addition to being interviewed frequently on radio and television, Dr. Levin has published essays and articles in numerous outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, First Things, Commentary, and Mosaic. He is the author of several books on political theory and public policy, most recently American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation― and Could Again (2024). He holds an MA and PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

Kenneth Marcus is founder and chairman of The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Professorial Lecturer in Law at the George
Washington University, and author of The Definition of Anti-Semitism (2015) and Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America (2010). During his public service career, Marcus served as assistant U.S. secretary of education for civil rights, staff director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and general deputy assistant U.S. secretary of housing and urban development for fair housing and equal opportunity. He also serves by gubernatorial appointment as a member of the board of governors of George Mason University and formerly served as a distinguished senior fellow at that university’s law school. He previously held the Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Chair in Equality and Justice in America at the City University of New York’s Bernard M. Baruch College School of Public Affairs and served as visiting research professor of political science at Yeshiva University.

Dr. Michael Oren is a statesman, historian, soldier, and author. Born in New York, he moved to Israel in the 1970s and served as a lone soldier in the paratroopers. He fought in the 1982 Lebanon War, and later served as an army spokesman, reaching the rank of major. He was an advisor to Israel’s delegation to the UN, to former Foreign Minister Abba Eban, and to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 2009, Oren was appointed Israel’s ambassador to the United States. Interacting with the White House, Congress, the Pentagon, and the CIA, he dealt with crucial strategic issues such as the Iron Dome defense system and the Iran nuclear threat. Returning to Israel, Oren was elected to the Knesset, where he headed a classified committee on international affairs and served as deputy minister in the prime minister’s office, in charge of diplomacy.

Oren has written numerous books, including Six Days of War (2003), Power, Faith, and Fantasy (2007), and Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide (2015)—all New York Times bestsellers. Dr. Oren has also been a prominent figure in the media, serving as Middle East analyst for both CNN and CBS news, and appearing on many other programs. His essays and op-eds have been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, and other outlets. Since leaving public office, he has represented Israeli high tech abroad and served as an advisor to numerous NGOs. His book, 2048 – The Rejuvenated State, was published in 2023.

Melanie Phillips is a British journalist, broadcaster, and author who has championed traditional values in the culture war for more than three decades. She writes a weekly column for the Times of London and the Jewish News Syndicate, broadcasts on radio and TV, and gives public presentations across the English-speaking world. Her new book, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West—And Why Only They Can Save It, will be published by Wicked Son in January 2025. Her first novel, The Legacy—which deals with conflicted Jewish identity, anti-Semitism, and the power of history—was published in 2018 along with her personal and political memoir, Guardian Angel. Her previous books include Londonistan (2006) and The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power (2010).

Dr. Ben Sasse is president emeritus and professor in the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida (UF). He previously served as the 13th president of the 170-year-old institution, guiding the university during an era of rapid change in the nature of work, technology, and higher education. In his time at the helm, Dr. Sasse moved swiftly to cultivate fresh leadership, construct a UF-wide strategic planning initiative, and ground UF’s priorities in making the highest and best use of public funds. Under his tenure, UF was named the number one public university by the Wall Street Journal. Sasse also led UF’s response to post-October 7 campus unrest with integrity and moral clarity, launched the President’s Strategic Initiative, and implemented new post-tenure review efforts.

Before being twice elected to the United States Senate from Nebraska and writing two New York Times national best-selling books, Sasse taught at Yale University, the University of Texas, and Midland University. Dr. Sasse has won teaching awards and holds a history PhD from Yale, where his dissertation won both the Egleston and Theron Rockwell Field best dissertation prizes.

Daniel S. Senor is a bestselling author, host of the “Call Me Back” podcast, and a co-founder and member of the board of directors of the Foreign Policy Initiative. His most recent government position was in the administration of George W. Bush, where Mr. Senor served as chief spokesman and senior adviser to the Coalition in Iraq. One of the longest-serving civilian officials in Iraq, Mr. Senor also served as a Pentagon adviser to U.S. Central Command in Qatar and as a foreign policy and communications aide in the U.S. Senate. He has also advised a number of candidates for U.S. Senate. During the 2012 presidential election, Mr. Senor was a senior foreign policy adviser to Governor Mitt Romney. His analytical pieces have been published by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, Time, and Newsweek. He is co-author of Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (2011) and The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World (2023). From 2001 to 2003, Mr. Senor worked as an investment banker at the Carlyle Group. He earned a BA in History from the University of Western Ontario and an MBA from Harvard.

Dr. Jonathan Silver is the chief programming officer of Tikvah, the editor of Mosaic, and the Warren R. Stern Senior Fellow of Jewish Civilization. As the host of the Tikvah Podcast, he has hosted hundreds of writers, rabbis, educators, military officers, artists, and political figures, including members of Israel’s Knesset, the U.S. Senate, and the prime minister of Israel.

Rabbi Dr. Meir Y. Soloveichik is a senior fellow and contributor at Tikvah, director of the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, and senior rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. He is also the host of the popular Bible 365, Jerusalem 365, and Ten-Minute Mitzvah daily podcasts. He has lectured throughout the United States, Europe, and Israel to both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences on topics relating to Jewish theology, Zionism and the miracle of modern Israel, the Hebraic roots of America, Jewish and American history, bioethics, wartime ethics, and Jewish-Christian relations. Rabbi Soloveichik’s essays on these subjects have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Commentary, Mosaic, First Things, Azure, Tradition, and the Torah U-Madda Journal. His book Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship was published by Encounter in 2023, and Sacred Time was published in 2024 by Koren’s Maggid Press. 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.

Recently retired from her position as Martin Peretz professor of Yiddish Literature and professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard, Professor Wisse is currently a distinguished senior fellow at Tikvah, where she writes regularly for Mosaic, teaches, and hosts the Stories Jews Tell podcast. Her books on literary subjects include an edition of Jacob Glatstein’s two-volume fictional memoir, The Glatstein Chronicles (2010),  A Little Love in Big Manhattan (1988), The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey through Literature and Culture (2003), and No Joke: Making Jewish Humor (2013), a volume in the Tikvah-sponsored Library of Jewish Ideas with Princeton University Press. She is also the author of two political studies, If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews (1992) and Jews and Power (2007). Her memoir, Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation, was published in 2021.