John M. Owen IV is Ambassador Henry J. and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and at UVA's Miller Center of Public Affairs. From January through June 2024 he was an academic visitor at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. His latest book is The Ecology of Nations: American Democracy in a Fragile World Order (Yale University Press, 2023). He is also the author of Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from the West’s Past (Princeton, 2014), The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510–2010 (Princeton, 2010), and Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Cornell, 1997). He is co-author, with Richard Rosecrance, of International Politics: How History Modifies Theory (Oxford, 2018). Owen has published in the European Journal of International Relations, Foreign Affairs, International Organization, Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, National Interest, New York Times, Perspectives on Politics, Washington Post, USA Today, and a number of edited volumes. He holds an A.B. from Duke University, an M.P.A. from Princeton University, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. 

James Davison Hunter is LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He completed his doctorate at Rutgers University in 1981 under the direction of Peter L. Berger and then joined the faculty of UVA in 1983.

Hunter has written nine books, edited four books, and published a wide range of essays, articles, and reviews—all variously concerned with the problem of meaning and moral order in a time of political and cultural change in American life. His newest book is Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality (Yale, 2018). In recent years, he published The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age without Good or Evil (2000), Is There A Culture War? A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life (with Alan Wolfe, 2006), and To Change the World (2010). These works have earned him national recognition and numerous literary awards. In 1988, he received the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion for Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation. In 1991, he was the recipient of the Gustavus Myers Award for the Study of Human Rights for Articles of Faith, Articles of Peace. The Los Angeles Times named Hunter as a finalist for their 1992 Book Prize for Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. In 2004, he was appointed by the White House to a six-year term to the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2005, he won the Weaver Prize for Scholarly Letters.

Since 1995, Hunter has served as the Executive Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Under his direction, the Institute sponsors university-wide colloquia, provides doctoral and post-doctoral research support, holds conferences, fields national surveys of public opinion on the changing political culture of late 20th and early 21st century America, and publishes an award-winning journal, The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture.