Making Men Moral Conference in Malibu

Paul J. Contino is Distinguished Professor in Great Books at Seaver College, Pepperdine University, where he has been twice granted the Howard A. White Award for Teaching Excellence.  In 2001 he co-edited and introduced Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith (Northwestern UP).  He has published a number of essays on Fyodor Dostoevsky, as well as essays on Zhuangzi, Dante Alighieri, and Jane Austen as well as a number of contemporary Catholic authors such as Andre Dubus, Tobias Wolff, and Alice McDermott.  His book Dostoevsky’s Incarnational Realism: Finding Christ among the Karamazovs (Cascade, 2020) has been published in Russian translation (Academic Studies Press 2023), and was named a finalist for both the Lilly Fellows and Christianity and Literature book awards.

Jesse Covington is professor of political science and director of the Augustinian Scholars honors program at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. He teaches and writes in the fields of political theory and constitutional law, with particular interest in the interrelation of religion and government. His publications include co-editing the book Evangelical Political Theory and Natural Law, along with articles and book chapters on St. Augustine of Hippo, political morality, democracy, the First Amendment, and Christian liberal arts education. His forthcoming book, Hopeful Realism: Evangelical Natural Law and Democratic Politics (with Bryan McGraw and Micah Watson) will be released in January 2025. Covington has taught at Westmont since 2007 and has also held appointments at Wheaton College and Princeton University.

Jesús Fernández-Villaverde is the Howard Marks Presidential Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he serves as director of the Penn Initiative for the Study of Markets and co-director of the Business, Economic, and Financial History Project. He is also a visiting professor at Cambridge University a fellow at Collegium Institute, a non-resident fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin, and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Center for Economic Policy Research. He is also a fellow of the Econometric Society.

He is editor of the International Economic Review. In the past, he has served on the editorial board of several other learned journals, and he currently serves as an officer in several academic societies.

He has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers, including American Economic Review, Econometrica, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Review of Economic Studies, and edited and co-authored several books.

His research focuses on macroeconomics, econometrics, and economic history. Among other topics, he is interested in the role of monetary and fiscal policy, the sources of economic growth, the importance of the rule of law, and the foundations of market economies.

John J. Goyette is vice president for advancement at Thomas Aquinas College which offers a four-year liberal arts program focusing on the study of the great books of western civilization at its two campuses in California and New England. Goyette, who has a PhD in philosophy from the Catholic University of America, has taught for more than 20 years at the California campus of the College and has also served in various administrative capacities including Dean of the College. He edited St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition (CUA Press, 2004) and has published articles on natural law and the political common good in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. He has also written and lectured on the natural philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas, the Trinitarian theology of Aquinas, and on John Henry Newman’s Idea of a University.

Dr. Christina Hinton leads the Human Flourishing Program’s work in education. At Harvard, she leads research on character skills, loving relationships, and flourishing among children, adolescents, educators and parents internationally. In addition, she leads the Evidence-Based Parenting for Flourishing Families initiative. Dr. Hinton is also the founder and CEO of Research Schools International (RSI), which has carried out over 50 research and professional development projects to promote character skills and flourishing in schools across 70 countries. She lectures internationally and has delivered keynotes in over 35 countries. Prior to her current roles, Dr. Hinton was a faculty member at Harvard Graduate School of Education, lecturing on neuroscience and education and social-emotional learning. In addition, she worked in multilateral diplomacy and international policymaking at the OECD’s Center for Educational Research and Innovation and UNICEF’s Early Childhood Development unit. She was also a research fellow at Sesame Workshop. Dr. Hinton completed her doctorate and master’s at Harvard in education, neuroscience, and child development, and her bachelors at Swarthmore in neuroscience and education.

William Jeynes is a senior fellow at Princeton’s Witherspoon Institute and a professor of education at California State University in Long Beach, California. He graduated first in his class from Harvard University and also graduated from the University of Chicago, where he received the Rosenberger Award for most outstanding student. Jeynes has spoken regularly and written for the White House, various government departments, and for three US presidential administrations, as well as for former members of a fourth administration. He has also served as an advisor for various other politicians, including presidential candidates. He has been an advisor/consultant for the EU, the UN, and several G20 foreign governments. His 4 point plan presented to the Acting President of South Korea passed the Korean Parliament and became the core of the nation’s 1998 economic stimulus legislation. This 4 point plan helped South Korea emerge from the greatest economic crisis since World War II faster than any other Asian nation (22% over two years). He has 185 publications to his credit, including 20 books. He received the “Distinguished Scholar Award” from the California Senate and the California State Assembly. He received the “Distinguished Achievement Award” from an arm of the American Educational Research Association.

His articles have appeared in journals by Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, Cambridge University, Notre Dame University, the London School of Economics, and other prestigious academic journals. He has spoken for the White House, the US Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the National Press Club, UN delegates, members of Congress, Vatican City, the Acting President of South Korea, Harvard University, Cambridge University, Oxford University, Columbia University, Cornell University, the University of Chicago, Peking University, Imperial College, and many other well-known universities.

Jeynes has been interviewed or quoted by many of the world’s leading newspapers and media outlets (e.g. the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Aljazeera, the London Times, Newsweek Japan, the Associated Press, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, FOX, WGN, Time Warner Cable, Spectrum TV, NPR, US News & World Report, USA Today, The Atlantic, the Japan Times, the Korean Times, the Teheran Times, etc.). His work has been cited and quoted numerous times by the US Congress, the US Supreme Court, the British Parliament, the EU, and many State Supreme Courts across the United States. Jeynes wrote the #1 and #2 all-time most cited articles in the over half century history of the journal Urban Education. He also wrote the #1 all-time most cited article in the 50+ year history of the journal Education & Urban Society. He periodically writes columns in the Orange County Register, the United States' 14th largest newspaper. His articles have been republished and highlighted in Yahoo News, Real Clear Politics, and in countless other publications. Dr. Jeynes also gained admission in Who's Who in the World every year of its publication since 2007.

J. A. T. Smith (PhD, UCLA) is associate provost, associate professor of english, and associate director of the Center for Faith and Learning

Smith works on the intersection of language and learning in late medieval England with an emphasis on the theological writings of the reformist educator, Bishop Reginald Pecock. She most recently published The Book of Faith: A Modern English Translation (UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2020). She is currently working on a manuscript entitled, The Book of Reginald Pecock, which seeks to reconstruct Pecock's corpus (even those texts that were burnt in the aftermath of his conviction of heresy). 

When not working on medieval manuscripts, Professor Smith also researches in the areas of digital pedagogy and rhetoric and is developing a Christian pedagogical app called The Vineyard. Since 2021, she has served as the Media Officer for the Medieval Association of the Pacific. She is also the founding convener for the Pepperdine Dialogue Dinners, a program intended to foster intellectual friendship among faculty through close reading and robust conversations. 

Byron Johnson is the founding director of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion and a faculty affiliate of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. He is a faculty scholar in the Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health at Duke University; senior fellow with the Witherspoon Institute (Princeton, NJ); senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute (Indianapolis, IN); and a senior advisor at the Religious Freedom Institute (Washington, DC). 

Johnson is a former member of the Coordinating Council for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (Presidential Appointment). He has been the principal investigator on grants from private foundations as well as the Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health, and the United States Institute for Peace, totaling more than $80 million. He is the author of more than 200 journal articles, monographs, and books. He is recognized as a leading authority on the scientific study of religion, the efficacy of faith-based organizations, and criminal justice. Recent publications have examined the impact of faith-based programs on offender treatment, drug addiction, recidivism reduction and prisoner reentry. These topics are the focus of his book More God, Less Crime: Why Faith Matters and How It Could (2011).

Johnson directs the Program on Prosocial Behavior, which examines the ways in which religion impacts key behaviors like volunteerism, generosity, and purpose. These topics are covered in four recent books, The Angola Prison Seminary (2016), which evaluates the influence of a Bible College and inmate-led congregations on prisoners serving life sentences; The Quest for Purpose: The Collegiate Search for a Meaningful Life (2017), which examines the link between religion and finding purpose and meaning, and the subsequent link to academic integrity; The Restorative Prison: Essays on Inmate Peer Ministry and Prosocial Corrections (2021), which looks at the empirical evidence in support of the link between religion and the emerging subfield of positive criminology; and Objective Religion: Competition, Tension, Perseverance (2021), which examines the factors related to the resilience of religion. 

Micah Watson is the Paul Henry Chair for Christianity and Politics at Calvin University. He is the co-author of C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law (Cambridge), and Hopeful Realism: Evangelical Natural Law and Democratic Politics (IVP Academic). He is a native of the great golden state of California, but is happy to call Grand Rapids, Michigan home along with his wife Julie and their five children.

Andrew M. Yuengert is a professor of economics and the Blanche Seaver Chair of Social Science at Pepperdine University. His research crosses the boundaries between economics, moral philosophy, and Catholic theology. His latest book is Catholic Social Teaching in Practice: Exploring Practical Wisdom and the Virtues Tradition (Cambridge, 2023). Previous books include The Boundaries of Technique (2004) and Approximating Prudence (2012). He has been a fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University, and a professor at the Catholic University of America. He current co-directs a monthly international online seminar on Economics and Catholic Social Thought for the Catholic Research Economist Discussion Organization (CREDO) and the Lumen Christi Institute. He holds a PhD in Economics from Yale University.