Life of the mind tour

Professor Patrick Gray is UATX's Dean of the Center for Arts and Letters. Previously, Gray served as Director of Liberal Arts at Durham University, where he was responsible for designing and introducing a new interdisciplinary core curriculum in the humanities. Before taking up his appointment at Durham, Gray taught comparative literature at Deep Springs College and the United States Military Academy at West Point. Gray is the author of Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic, editor of Shakespeare and the Ethics of War, and co-editor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Ethics and Shakespeare and Montaigne.

Dr. Sam Schwartz is a recent graduate from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oregon. Sam earned his master's degree in Mathematics from Utah State University, where he also earned his bachelor's degree as a double major in Mathematics and Computer Science with minors in Spanish and Organizational Communication. Sam has also spent time working with a variety of federal government national laboratories, small businesses and large technology companies, and teaching high school English in Chile. When not working, Sam enjoys driving up and down Oregon's beautiful coast with his dog.

Professor David Ruth is Dean of UATX's Center for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Previously, Ruth held several leadership positions as a Permanent Military Professor of Mathematics at the United States Naval Academy, where he was an award-winning teacher from 2009 until 2022. Ruth has authored several articles in a variety of statistics journals, as well as a book chapter on mathematics in cybersecurity. Prior to his academic work, Ruth led and served as a naval officer with operational experience in submarine and surface warfare, nuclear power, oceanography, and meteorology.

Professor Jacob Howland is Dean of UATX’s Intellectual Foundations program, which comprises the first two years of our undergraduate curriculum. Previously, Howland served as McFarlin Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tulsa and Senior Fellow at the Tikvah Fund. He is the author of five books and one edited book, including two on Plato’s Republic as well as studies of Kierkegaard and the Talmud. Howland’s articles have appeared in The New Criterion, City Journal, and The Nation, among others.

Kirsten Hall Herlin graduated from Hillsdale College and completed her PhD in English at the University of Texas at Austin. Before coming to the University of Austin, she served as the Director of the Literature Program at Ave Maria University. She is currently the Managing Editor of the Genealogies of Modernity Journal. Her research focuses on religion and eighteenth-century British literature, and her work has been published in academic journals such as Modern Philology, Renascence, and Notes & Queries. She has also appeared as a guest on National Review’s podcast The Great Books and has written articles for The Weekly Standard and The New Atlantis.

Scott Scheall is Associate Professor of Philosophy & Economics in the Center for Economics, Politics & History. Prior to joining the University of Austin, he taught for fourteen years at Arizona State University. Scott’s research considers the significance of human ignorance for decision-making, particularly in the political realm. He is the author of two books, F. A. Hayek and the Epistemology of Politics: The Curious Task of Economics and Dialogues concerning Natural Politics: A Modern Philosophical Dialogue about Policymaker Ignorance, a unique textbook freely available for use in courses in political philosophy, political science, economics, and political economy. His work has appeared in journals in philosophy, political economy, history of economics, bioethics, and cognitive psychology. Scott is co-editor of Review of the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, and founder, producer, and former co-host of the long-running podcast Smith and Marx Walk into a Bar: A History of Economics Podcast. He occasionally posts and podcasts at his Substack page, The Problem of Policymaker Ignorance (policymakerignorance.substack.com).

Jacob Wolf is a founding faculty member of the University of Austin, where he is Assistant Professor of Politics in the Center for Economics, Politics, and History. He was previously Assistant Professor of Government in the Honors College and the College of Arts and Sciences at Regent University, where he also served as the Associate Director of the Lincoln Program in America's Founding Ideals. Before these positions, Jacob was the 2020-2021 John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University.  He received his Ph.D. in political science from Boston College in 2020, double majoring in political theory and American politics. His current research employs insights from those two disciplines to understand contemporary changes in American religious beliefs and practices. In particular, he studies the social and religious ramifications of individualism—especially expressive individualism.  His overall scholarly objective is to demonstrate how ideas and presuppositions about human nature have profound consequences for both individuals and society. His academic writing has been published in Perspectives on Political Science, Political Science Reviewer, Interpretation, and The Public Discourse. His book manuscript, tentatively-titled "Harmonizing Heaven and Earth," argues that individualism—and not secularization—is responsible for large scale changes in American religion.  He has been awarded scholarly fellowships from The Philadelphia Society, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Jack Miller Center, the Philos Project, and the Institute for Humane Studies.  He is the 2022 recipient of the Jack Miller Center's Award for Excellence in Civic Education as well as the 2018 Donald J. White Award for Teaching Excellence from Boston College.

Morgan Marietta is Dean of the Center for Economics, Politics & History. Prior to joining the University of Austin, he taught at the University of Massachusetts Lowell for eleven years and served as Chair of Political Science (briefly) at the University of Texas at Arlington. He studies the political consequences of belief, focusing on constitutional politics, political psychology, and facts in politics. He is the author of four books, including A Citizen’s Guide to American Ideology, A Citizen’s Guide to the Constitution and the Supreme Court, The Politics of Sacred Rhetoric: Absolutist Appeals and Political Persuasion, and most recently One Nation, Two Realities: Dueling Facts in American Democracy. His studies of contemporary politics, including absolutist rhetoric, ideological premises, the rhetoric of reality, and the role of hubris have appeared in the leading journals in political science, including the Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, and the American Political Science Review. He is the founding editor of the annual SCOTUS series at Palgrave Macmillan on the major rulings of the Supreme Court and is a regular commentator on constitutional politics. His current book project is The Supreme Court of Facts, on the role of the Court in addressing disputed perceptions of reality.