President of the Institute, Senior Fellow in Political Science and Human Rights

Stephen Baskerville is Associate Professor of Government at Patrick Henry College and Research Fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society and at the Independent Institute.  He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and has taught political science and international affairs at Howard University (1987-1992 and 1997-2005) and Palacky University in the Czech Republic (1992-1997).  He writes on political theory with an emphasis on religion, most notably in Not Peace But a Sword: The Political Theology of the English Revolution (Routledge, 1993), and on the politics of the family, as in Taken Into Custody: The War against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family (Cumberland House, October 2007).  He has served as president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children (2005-2007), is currently a Fulbright scholar at the Russian State University for the Humanities, and serves as managing editor for the International Journal for Religious Freedom.

Founder, President Emeritis, Distinguished Senior Fellow in Philosophy, Political Science, and the Humanities

Olavo de Carvalho, b. 1947, is a Brazilian philosopher and writer who is currently living in the United States after having taught political philosophy at the Catholic University of Paraná, Brazil, from 2001 to 2005. The author of a dozen books on philosophical and political matters, he is a respected weekly columnist with a wide following in his native Brazil and an increasingly popular public speaker in this country. He has spoken at the Hudson Institute, the Atlas Foundation, and the America’s Future Foundation, and has been honored by critics as one of the most original and daring Brazilian thinkers.

Distinguished Senior Fellow in Political Leadership and Constitutional Governance

Laureate, the Samuel Adams-Jose Bonifacio Prize for 2010

Roberto Micheletti (b. 13 Aug. 1943) is a former President of Honduras (28 June 2009 – 27 January 2010).  He succeeded to the Presidency as a result of the constitutional crisis arising from then President Manuel Zelaya’s June 2009 attempt to illegally change the national Constitution.  The Attorney General’s office charged Manuel Zelaya with violations of the constitution, laws and court orders. The Honduran Supreme Court found that Zelaya was violating the Constitution and issued an arrest warrant ordering the Honduran military to detain Zelaya.  The military arrested Manuel Zelaya and he was exiled rather than held to face criminal charges as the Attorney General of the Honduras had intended.

Distinguished Senior Fellow in Constitutional Law and Jurisprudence

Justice Tom Parker was first elected to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2004; he was reelected to the Court in 2010.  Justice Parker is known as the most conservative justice on the Supreme Court.

He previously was the Deputy Administrative Director of Courts, where he served as General Counsel for the Alabama court system, advising trial court judges, and as the Director of the Alabama Judicial College, providing training for new judges and continuing legal education for all the trial judges in Alabama. He also served as the Legal Adviser to Chief Justice Roy Moore.

Distinguished Senior Fellow in Jurisprudence and Constitutional and Monetary Law

Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School). For over thirty-six years he has been a practicing attorney, specializing in cases that raise issues of constitutional law. In the Supreme Court of the United States he successfully argued or briefed the cases leading to the landmark decisions Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America v. Beck, which established constitutional and statutory limitations on the uses to which labor unions, in both the private and the public sectors, may apply fees extracted from workers as a condition of their employment.

Distinguished Senior Fellow in Western Civilization and the History of Ideas

Paul Gottfried has spent the last thirty years writing books and generating hostility among authorized media-approved conservatives. His most recent work is his autobiography Encounters; and he is currently preparing a long study of Leo Strauss and his disciples for Cambridge University Press. His works sell better in Rumanian, Spanish, Russian and German translations than they do in the original English, and particularly in the Beltway.The German translation of his book Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt obtained a commendation from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 2004 as one of the most noteworthy books of the year.

Distinguished Senior Fellow in Political and Human Rights Leadership

NOTE: Alejandro Penã Esclusa, jailed last year by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez (read here), has been recently released.

Former Venezuelan presidential candidate Alejandro Peña-Esclusa is a prominent Latin American leader, widely respected for combining political experience with a solid moral and intellectual foundation at a time of rapidly increasing geopolitical danger and unprecedented security threats in the region.

Peña-Esclusa was the pioneer of the mass mobilizations against Chavez’s totalitarian project, which has resulted in fierce government persecution against him ever since. Many consider Peña-Esclusa the arch-nemesis of vehemently anti-American Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, a militant Marxist, heir and protégé of Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

Distinguished Senior Fellow in Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence and Public Policy

A nationally-known constitutional scholar, author and lecturer, Herbert W. Titus is of counsel to the law firm of William J. Olson, P.C. He taught constitutional law, common law, and other subjects for nearly thirty years at five different American Bar Association-approved law schools. From 1986 to 1993, he served as the founding Dean of the College of Law and Government at Regent University in Virginia and was Provost of the University.

Distinguished Senior Fellow in the Study of Social Trends, Human Rights and Media Forensics
(Related studies and advocacy: Social Law and Judicial Intervention)

Dr. Judith Reisman is sought worldwide to speak, lecture, testify, and counsel individuals, organizations, professionals and governments in Media Forensics, the scientific analysis of images, pictures, cartoons, illustrations, pornography and text in sexual harassment of women and children in the workplace, schools, and homes. Her Media Forensic expertise has been successful in child custody cases, examining “pseudo-child” and “virtual-child” pornography, as well as in judicial and legislative decisions about a) fraudulent sex science, sex education and b) the way in which media images restructure human brain, mind, memory, and conduct by hijacking rationality. The special emphasis of her Media Forensic research has been and continues to be the scientific documentation of the difference between public and private space human erotic displays, and the subversion of informed consent via exposure to supranormal visual stimuli.

Distinguished Senior Fellow in Political Science

Vladimir Tismăneanu, born July 4, 1951, is a Romanian and American political scientist, political analyst, sociologist, and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. A specialist in political systems and comparative politics, he is director of the University of Maryland’s Center for the Study of Post-Communist Societies, having served as chairman of the editorial committee (2004–2008) and editor (1998–2004) of the East European Politics and Societiesacademic review. Over the years, Tismăneanu was a contributor to several periodicals, including Studia Politica, Journal of Democracy, Sfera Politicii, Revista 22, Evenimentul Zilei, Idei în Dialog and Cotidianul. He has also worked with the international radio stations Radio Free Europe and Deutsche Welle, and authored programs for the Romanian Television Company. As of 2009, he is Academic Council Chairman of the Institute for People’s Studies, a think tank of the RomanianDemocratic Liberal Party. Since February 2010, he is also President of the Scientific Council of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania.

Distinguished Senior Fellow in Sinology, Classic Chinese Philosophy, and Chinese Medicine

Dr. Ahmed Youssif El Tassa, MD, is one of the world’s leading researchers in Chinese philosophy and Chinese medicine. He has been living in Beijing, China, since 1991. Dr. El Tassa is the first Westerner to hold a Master’s Degree in Chinese Philosophy from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). He was formerly trained in medicine, homeopathy, acupuncture, naturopathy, psycho-pedagogy, and anthropology in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, England, France, Italy, Hong Kong, and Netherlands. For twenty-three years, Dr. El Tassa has been a practicing medical doctor, specializing in the psychosomatic approach towards difficult medical cases. After 10 years of research at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), and despite its rampant atheism, he successfully defended his thesis about the intrinsic relationship between human body, soul, and spirit, which allowed him to become the first non-Chinese scholar to be granted the title of Professor of Chinese Philosophy by that institution.

Distinguished Senior Fellow in Political Science

Jeffrey Nyquist is a political analyst and writer concerned with the threat of global totalitarian dominance and the decline of the West. Nyquist specializes in the “sociology of knowledge with regard to mass destruction warfare.” He says that Western man has chosen to live in denial about weapons of mass destruction. To know history, says Nyquist, is to grasp man’s recurring self-destructive tendency. With nuclear weapons this tendency has new potential.

Senior Fellow in Political and Human Rights Leadership

Colonel Alfonso Plazas-Vega is widely recognized as one of the leading figures in the fight against the Marxist guerilla network that dominates illegal drug trade in the Western Hemisphere and oppresses many tens of millions of people, not merely through the scourge of urban crime and systematic corruption of public officials, but also by funding Marxist guerilla movements and terrorism in numerous countries of North, South and Central America.

Senior Fellow for the Study of Effective Drug Demand Reduction Policy

Recognized throughout South America, in Europe and North America as a leader in the battle against drug addiction and associated social problems, Professor Carakushansky is President of Brazilian Humanitarians in Action (BRAHA) and has been for the last ten years the International Coordinator of Forging Leadership in Latin America for Drug Demand Reduction, a Program of the Drug Prevention Network of the Americas and Drug Free America Foundation. She has coordinated more than sixty seminars in almost all major cities of Latin America. She has developed numerous drug prevention programs and has authored books, texts and articles about Community Policing, Drug Prevention, Legalization, and Preventive Cities.

Senior Fellow in Practical Political Leadership

Steve Baldwin is a veteran leader at every level from local grassroots political organization to national networking among the most prominent political leaders, as well as an author, pundit and political consultant.  As Executive Director of the Council for National Policy (2001-2009) he worked with many of America’s leading conservative figures and interacted with the national media.  Elected to the California Assembly (1994-2000) he was quickly appointed Chairman of the Education Committee, the youngest in California history, and rose to become Minority Whip of the California Assembly.  Like many other Fellows of the Inter-American Institute, his life’s work has immersed him at times in strategic projects that took for granted the urgency of the United States’ relationships and responsibilities throughout its own hemisphere.

Senior Fellow for the Public Understanding of Law, Propaganda and Cultural Revolution

John Haskins writes and is interviewed about society, politics, education, religion, parents’ rights and the sabotage of constitutional government by both the left and the self-styled “right.” He is regarded by respected experts in constitutional law, political philosophy and political history as having articulated in a provocative and original manner fundamental and widely overlooked insights into the underlying reasons for the impotence (in the wealthy Western World) of institutional, mass market “Christianity” and so-called “conservatism” (a term which he sees as pejorative for it’s defensive, reactionary and (in practice) fatally materialistic values and aims.

Senior Fellow in Philosophy of Science and the Worldview of Ethical Monotheism

Earle Fox is an Anglican priest who earned his Doctor of Philosophy in l964 at Oxford University, researching the relation between science and theology. He holds a Master of Divinity in theology from the Episcopal General Theological Seminary in New York, which included a year of Clinical Pastoral Education in two mental hospitals, a prison, and a general hospital. He holds his BA in philosophy from Trinity College in Hartford, Ct. He was ordained to the Episcopal diaconate in June of 1960 by Bishop Angus Dunn at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. The Bishop of Oxford ordained him a priest so that he could be the chaplain at Oriel College, Oxford, in 1962.

Fellow in Philosophy and Political Science

Miguel Bruno Duarte is a Portuguese philosopher whose work is focused on economic, political, and religious classical liberalism. Being an independent thinker, he tries to develop and systematize this principle mainly in his writings, the first of which, entitled Noemas de Filosofia Portuguesa (Noemes of Portuguese Philosophy), is about to be published in Brazil. He is also a scholar in the strict sense of the word in the study of Portuguese scholasticism, which is chiefly based on Aristotle’s logical, ethical and metaphysical thought.

Associate Fellow in the Study of Propaganda and Cultural Revolution

Amy Contrada is recognized nationally as the leading expert on Mitt Romney’s record on “gay rights” and “gay marriage” in Massachusetts. Also notable are her exposés on the sexual-radical programs in the schools and the “transgender rights” movement. Her writings combine frontline involvement, in-depth research, and careful documentation.

In 2011 she published the definitive study of Mitt Romney’s record on “gay rights,” Mitt Romney’s Deception: His Stealth Promotion of “Gay Rights” and “Gay Marriage” in Massachusetts. She has been featured in numerous radio interviews nationwide. Her book has been reviewed in WorldNetDaily, RenewAmerica, The New American, Christian Post, Dakota Voice, Greeley Gazette, etc. Excerpts from her book are available as e-books under the titles: How “Gay Marriage” Came to Massachusetts: Governor Mitt Romney’s Failure in a Constitutional Crisis; and Romney vs. Family Values: The Romney Administration’s Radical Homosexual Programs Targeting Children in Massachusetts.

Junior Fellow in Practical Political Leadership