Life of the mind tour

Benjamin Crocker is the Director of Special Programs and Associate Director of Admissions at the University of Austin. He is from North Queensland, Australia, and previously taught at The King’s School, and The University of Sydney.

In Australia, Mr. Crocker has conducted the Queensland and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras, and recorded for nationwide radio broadcast at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Mr. Crocker holds a B.Mus. from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, a teaching diploma from the University of Southern Queensland, and an M.A. from St. John’s College, Annapolis.

Jacob Wolf was formerly Assistant Professor of Government in the Honors College and the College of Arts and Sciences at Regent University, where he was also 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. He studies the social and religious ramifications of expressive individualism. His academic writing has been published in Perspectives on Political Science, Political Science Reviewer, Interpretation, and The Public Discourse, and he is the 2022 recipient of the Jack Miller Center's Award for Excellence in Civic Education.

Alex Priou received a Ph.D. and M.A. in Philosophy from Tulane University, an M.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Connecticut.

Priou is the author of three books on Plato: "Becoming Socrates: Political Philosophy in Plato’s Parmenides" (2018), "Defending Socrates: Political Philosophy Before the Tribunal of Science" (2023), and "Musings on Plato’s 'Symposium'" (2023). He has also written essays on the history of philosophy for various journals and edited volumes in Classics, Philosophy, Political Science, Literature, and Film, including studies of Homer, Hesiod, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, and beyond. He also engages in public scholarship, occasionally writing for a general audience, but most frequently with The New Thinkery, a weekly podcast he co-hosts with his two close friends, Gregory McBrayer and David Bahr. Together, they aim to model friendly and fun conversations between friends on texts and topics in the history of philosophy.

Priou is currently at work on a book on Plato’s that will offer a comprehensive overview of its drama that situates the characters, with all their hopes, opinions, and commitments, in the context of the political events that have shaped them. He hopes to show how Socrates’ investigation of the good life amid the political and moral decline of imperial Athens can serve as a model for us today, confronted as we are by similar circumstances. After that, he plans to resume work on a non-historical study of the nature of civilization and barbarism intended for a more general, educated audience.

Clay Greene is a scholar of early modern literature and thought. He received his Ph.D. in English and Renaissance Studies at Yale. His work focuses on the literary, philosophical, and historical inheritances of early modern Greece and Rome.

Dr. Greene’s scholarly interests lie in early modern England's literary and intellectual culture, especially from the 1650s through the 1750s. Within that broad framework, he studies the intersections of philosophy, theology, and poetry, with a focus on the poetic work of John Milton. His dissertation project covered the revival of the Platonic doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul among English poets and philosophers, arguing that this revival constituted a genuine religious movement of significance. He is fascinated by how individual moral and spiritual considerations always take place against a complete background of metaphysical assumptions about the nature and significance of reality. No era better exemplifies this fact than the late seventeenth century, a time when the “world pictures” of entire societies were in radical flux. Recently, his interests have shifted from the metaphysical to the physical, focusing on the imagination of warfare in early modernity. Still, even here, the focus remains on how beliefs about war crucially depend upon general beliefs about man’s role in the cosmic drama of creation.

Dr. Greene’s next project is a study of the relationship between epic poetry and warfare, focusing on the sublime poetics of physical size and power. "Paradise Lost" is at the center of that study, which also includes William Davenant’s "Gondibert," John Dryden’s "Annus Mirabilis," and short works by Joseph Addison and Aphra Behn.

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.  

Dr. Staley has 35 years of combined experience in academia and industry. He has taught computer science at UC Santa Barbara, Cal Poly SLO, and Principia College. Staley has built software and managed software development projects for a variety of small and large organizations, and has cofounded several small software companies.