Who We Are

Daniel Asia

President

Daniel Asia (www.danielasia.net) has been an eclectic and unique composer from the start. He has received grants from Meet the Composer, a UK Fulbright award, Guggenheim Fellowship, MacDowell and Tanglewood fellowships, ASCAP and BMI prizes, Copland Fund grants, and numerous others. He was recently honored with a Music Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

As a writer and critic, his articles have appeared in Academic Questions, The New Criterion, the Huffington Post, Athenaeum Review, and New Music Connoisseur.  He is the author of Observations on Music, Culture and Politics, recently published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and editor of The Future of (High Culture) in America (also CSP).

The recorded works of Daniel Asia, including his five symphonies, may be heard on the labels of Summit, New World, Attacca, Albany, Babel, Innova, and Mushkatweek

Robert Edward Gordon

Vice President

Dr. Robert Edward Gordon is author of Buddhism and Architecture in America: Building for Enlightenment (2022). His writing can be found in The Wall Street Journal, the Athenaeum Review, Philosophies, Space and Culture, and Social Philosophy & Policy, and the Japanese American National Museum’s Traveling Exhibit. He holds a Ph.D. in the History of Art, an MA in Art History & Theory, and a B.A. in Philosophy. Dr. Gordon brings his expertise in matters of culture to a broad range of research interests: Asian art and philosophy, art and economics, freedom and aesthetics, art and poverty, and humanistic geography.

James R. Harrigan

Chief Operating Officer

Dr. James R. Harrigan is the Chief Operating Officer for Polyhymnia, and co-host of the Words & Numbers podcast. He was previously Senior Research Fellow and Senior Editor at the American Institute for Economic Research, Managing Director of the Center for Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona, Dean of the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani, and Director of Academic Programs at the Institute for Humane Studies and Strata, where he was also Senior Research Fellow. His articles have appeared everywhere from the Wall Street Journal to USA Today. He is also co-author of Cooperation & Coercion. His current work focuses on popular culture.

Joshua D. Nichols

Composer in Residence
Artistic Fellow

Dr. Joshua Nichols is a seasoned and in-demand composer for chamber ensembles and large ensembles. His recent work, Hansel und Gretel, was premiered at the University of Arizona Wind Ensemble under the direction of Dr. Chad Nicholson. Nichols was recently commissioned by The First Presbyterian Church of Baton Rouge to write What Tongue Can Tell? for chamber ensemble and choir, under the direction of Mr. Christopher Phillips.

Dr. Nichols is an Artistic Fellow at the Center for American Culture and ideas. His work involves authoring a book on listening to music, as well as producing a podcast called The Cultured Mind on arts, culture, and ideas. As a part of his fellowship, he writes new music.

Thomas L. Krannawitter

Senior Fellow

Dr. Thomas L. Krannawitter is President of Speakeasy Ideas where he specializes in distilling the most important ideas—starting with the idea of human liberty—helping others to understand and use those ideas to improve their own lives.

He holds a Ph.D. from the School of Politics & Economics at the Claremont Graduate University. He has taught at Claremont McKenna College, Hillsdale College, Ashland University, and George Mason University, among other places. He was formerly Director of Academic Programs and Vice President at The Claremont Institute in California.

He’s one of the principal instructors for the Leadership Program of the Rockies, based in Colorado, and the Charter Oak Leadership Program in Connecticut. He frequently advises businesses and charitable organizations on communications, cultural development, and strategy.

Dominic Green

Senior Fellow

Dr. Dominic Green is a historian, critic and columnist. He is a Contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a columnist for The Washington Examiner, a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (where he cohosts the First Draft podcast with Robert D. Kaplan), and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts. He writes regularly for The New Criterion, The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph and The Literary Review, and was previously editor-in-chief of The Spectator’s U.S. edition. He is the author of five books, including The Double Life of Dr. Lopez: Spies, Shakespeare and the Plot to Poison Elizabeth I, Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869-1899, and The Religious Revolution: The Birth of Modern Spirituality, 1848-1898, and has taught at Brandeis University, Boston College, and Hillsdale College, where he was the 2023 Pulliam Fellow in Journalism.

Antony Davies

Senior Fellow

Antony Davies is currently Director of Economic Research at an investment bank in the Washington DC area. He was a tenured professor of economics and statistics, and taught at several universities from the undergraduate through the Ph.D. levels. He author (or co-authored) Understanding Statistics (Cato Institute), Principles of Microeconomics (Cognella), and Cooperation & Coercion (ISI Books). Davies has authored hundreds of op-eds appearing in, among others, the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, New York Post, and Washington Post. His educational videos have tens of millions of downloads on YouTube. Davies co-hosts the weekly podcast Words & Numbers.

In addition to his academic work, Dr. Davies was Associate Producer at the Moving Pictures Institute, Chief Financial Officer at Parabon Computation, founded several technology companies, and is co-author on a patent for distributed super-computation. Davies earned his B.S. in Economics from Saint Vincent College, and Ph.D. in Economics from the State University of New York at Albany.

Aryeh Tepper

Senior Fellow

Aryeh Tepper is the co-Director of the Omni-American Future Project and the Director of Publications at The American Sephardi Federation. The author of Progressive Minds, Conservative Politics: Leo Strauss’ Later Writings on Maimonides (SUNY Press, 2013), Aryeh’s essays, articles, liner notes and translations have appeared in English and Hebrew in Interpretation, The Weekly Standard, The Tel Aviv Review of Books, Moment Magazine, Mosaic Magazine, White Rose Magazine, Commentary, Ha’aretz, Maqor Rishon, Aqdamot and more. A Fellow at The Azrieli Center for Israel Studies at The Ben-Gurion Research Institute, BGU, Aryeh has lectured at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, the Columbia Center for Jazz Studies, the Mizpeh Ramon Jazz Conservatory and the University of Arizona’s online “Voices of Culture.” He is co-host of the “Straight Ahead” podcast and serves on the steering committee of the municipal archive and museum in the southern Israeli town of Ofaqim, where he lives.

Jay Nordlinger

Senior Fellow

Jay Nordlinger is a political journalist and music critic. He is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor to RDI’s publication, The Next Move. He is the music critic of The New Criterion. His personal site on Substack is Onward and Upward. He is a contributing writer for The Dispatch. He is the author of Peace, They Say, a history of the Nobel Peace Prize, and Children of Monsters, a book about the sons and daughters of dictators. Since 2002, he has given talks and conducted interviews for the Salzburg Festival Society.

Robert Anthony Peters

Fellow

Robert Anthony Peters is a member of SAG-AFTRA and has been acting, producing, directing, and writing professionally in theater, film, voiceover, and more for over two decades. His most recognizable film acting roles are in The Pursuit of Happyness and Steve Jobs. He writes and lectures internationally on the relationships between art, law, philosophy, and economics. He records audiobooks, is a policy advisor for the Heartland Institute, a fellow with the Archbridge Institute, and is chair of the board of the Fully Informed Jury Association. He also manages his family’s retail shipping store in Tucson, AZ. His film writing, directing, and producing debut “Tank Man” has screened in over 15 countries, 20 states, and 55 cities with over 2.3 million online views and collected over 16 awards including “best short,” “audience favorite,” and “most inspirational.” Tank Man can be found at TankManTheMovie.com. Robert can be found at RobertAnthonyPeters.com.

Daniel Beliavsky

Fellow

Daniel Beliavsky, Ph.D., is an educator, concert pianist, music theorist, composer, and filmmaker. He has performed in Europe and throughout the United States with both orchestra and in recital—notable engagements include concerto performances with the Milwaukee and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras and the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra. His discography includes the world-premiere recording of composer Lukas Foss’s complete piano works, early works by Donald Harris and David Del Tredici, and music by J.S. Bach, Domenico Scarlatti, Franz Schubert, Frederic Chopin, and Modest Mussorgsky. Daniel’s recordings are available on all major streaming services.

Now Chair of the Fine Art and Music Department at Yeshiva University in New York City, Daniel has been a visiting professor of music theory, piano performance, aesthetics, writing about music, and history at several universities, including the City College of New York, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Stern College, Montclair State University, the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, Mannes College, and New York University.

www.youtube.com/opus1films

Blake Scott

Fellow

Dr. Blake Scott Ball grew up playing music and writing in his hometown Muscle Shoals, Alabama. After graduating from the University of North Alabama in 2008, he completed his MA and PhD in History at the University of Alabama. He taught seven years at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, where he was department chair and won top teaching honors. In the fall of 2024, Dr. Ball joined the faculty at the University of North Alabama as Associate Professor of History. Dr. Ball teaches courses in US History, Southern History, and Social Studies Education.

In addition to teaching, Dr. Ball is also the author of Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts (Oxford University Press, 2021). He is currently writing a new cultural biography of America’s darkest superhero titled Batman: The Making of an American Myth (Oxford University Press).