Martha Bayles writes for The Weekly Standard, the New York Sun, The Wilson Quarterly, the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, and many other publications. Her blog, “Serious Popcorn,” can be found at ArtsJournal.com. She is the author of two books: Ain’t That a Shame? Censorship and the Culture of Transgression  (Institute for the Study of the Americas, 1996) and Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music (University of Chicago Press, 1994). She is currently on the faculty of the honors program at Boston College and a visiting fellow at the Aspen Institute Berlin.

Arthur C. Brooks is the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and a visiting scholar at AEI, where he researches culture, philanthropy, and social entrepreneurship. He is the author of Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism (Basic Books, 2006), which examines American charitable giving, and he has just finished Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America—and How We Can Get More of It, which will be released in May.

Christopher DeMuth has been president of AEI since 1986. He was previously managing director of Lexecon Inc., an economics consulting firm; editor and publisher of Regulation magazine; administrator for regulatory affairs at the Office of Management and Budget; executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief in the Reagan administration; lecturer and director of regulatory studies at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; an attorney with the Consolidated Rail Corporation and the law firm of Sidley & Austin; and staff assistant to President Richard Nixon. He is a director of the State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Companies and two family companies. Mr. DeMuth’s essays have appeared in The American Enterprise, Harvard Law Review, Yale Journal of Regulation, the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and other publications.

Benjamin M. Friedman is the William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy and former chairman of the department of economics at Harvard University. His latest book, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, was published in October 2005 by Alfred A. Knopf. Mr. Friedman’s best known previous book is Day of Reckoning: The Consequences of American Economic Policy under Reagan and After, which received the George S. Eccles Prize, awarded annually by Columbia University for excellence in writing about economics. Mr. Friedman is also the author of more than one hundred articles on monetary economics, macroeconomics, and monetary and fiscal policy, published in numerous journals. Mr. Friedman’s current professional activities include serving as a director and member of the editorial board of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a director of the Private Export Funding Corporation, a trustee of the Standish Mellon Investment Trust, and an adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In addition, he has served as director of financial markets and monetary economics research at the National Bureau of Economic Research, as a member of the National Science Foundation Subcommittee on Economics, as an adviser to the Congressional Budget Office, as a trustee of the College Retirement Equities Fund, and as a director of the American Friends of Cambridge University. He is a member of the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity and the Council on Foreign Relations. Most recently, Mr. Friedman was the 2005 recipient of the John R. Commons Award, presented every two years in recognition of achievements in economics and service to the economics profession.

Michael Novak is a theologian, author, and former U.S. ambassador who holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at AEI. He is the 1994 recipient of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. Mr. Novak has written twenty-six influential books on the philosophy and theology of culture, especially the essential elements of a free society. His masterpiece, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (Madison, 1982), was published underground in Poland in 1984 and, after 1989, in Czechoslovakia, Germany, China, Hungary, Bangladesh, Korea, and many countries in Latin America. His latest book is Washington’s God: Religion, Liberty, and the Founder of Our Country (Basic Books, 2006). For his work and influence, he has received many international awards.

Orlando Patterson is the John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. His academic interests include the culture and practice of freedom, the comparative study of slavery and ethno-racial relations, the sociology of underdevelopment with special reference to the Caribbean, and the problems of gender and familial relations in the black societies of the Americas. He is especially interested in the ways that cultural processes relate to poverty and other social outcomes. Mr. Patterson is the author of numerous books, including The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s “Racial” Crisis (Basic Civitas, 1997), Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (Basic Books, 1991), and Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Harvard University Press, 1982). The author of three novels, he has published widely in journals of opinion and the national press, especially the New York Times, where he was recently a guest columnist for several weeks. He is the recipient of many awards, including the National Book Award for Non-Fiction, which he won in 1991 for his book on freedom, and the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award of the American Sociological Association. He is cowinner of the Ralph Bunche Award for the best book on pluralism from the American Political Science Association. He was awarded the Order of Distinction by the Government of Jamaica in 1999. Mr. Patterson has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1991.

Peter H. Schuck is the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where he has held the chair since 1984. His major fields of teaching and research are tort law; immigration, citizenship, and refugee law; groups and diversity law; and administrative law. His most recent books include Targeting in Social Programs: Avoiding Bad Bets, Removing Bad Apples (Brookings Institution Press, 2006), Meditations of a Militant Moderate: Cool Views on Hot Topics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), Immigration Stories (Foundation Press, 2005), Foundations of Administrative Law (Foundation Press, 2004), Diversity in America: Keeping Government at a Safe Distance (Harvard University Press, 2003), and The Limits of Law: Essays on Democratic Governance (Westview Press, 2000). Prior to joining Yale, Mr. Schuck was principal deputy assistant secretary for planning and evaluation in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Linda Waite is a professor of sociology and director of the Center on Aging at the University of Chicago, where she also codirects the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children and Work. She is coauthor of Being Together, Working Apart: Dual-Career Families and the Work-Life Balance, with Barbara Schneider (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and of The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially, with Maggie Gallagher (Broadway Books, 2000). Her current research interests include social demography; aging; the family; health; working families; and the link between biology, psychology, and the social world.

James Q. Wilson is chairman of AEI’s Council of Academic Advisers and currently the Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. He was the James Collins Professor of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1985 to 1997 and the Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard University from 1961 to 1987. Mr. Wilson is the author of many books, including The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families (HarperCollins, 2002); On Character (AEI Press, 1995); Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It (Basic Books, 1989); and Crime and Human Nature, with Richard R. Herrstein (Simon & Schuster, 1985). Mr. Wilson is coauthor, with John DiIulio, of the textbook American Government (tenth edition, Houghton Mifflin, 2005). He has also edited or contributed to books on urban problems, government regulation of business, and prevention of delinquency among children. He is past president of the American Political Science Association, and he is the only political scientist to win three of the four lifetime achievement awards presented by the association. In 2003, Mr. Wilson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor recognizing exceptional meritorious service.

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