President

Daniel Asia (www.danielasia.net) has been an eclectic and unique composer from the start. He has received grants from Meet the Composer, a UK Fulbright award, Guggenheim Fellowship, MacDowell and Tanglewood fellowships, ASCAP and BMI prizes, Copland Fund grants, and numerous others. He was recently honored with a Music Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

As a writer and critic, his articles have appeared in Academic Questions, The New Criterion, the Huffington Post, Athenaeum Review, and New Music Connoisseur.  He is the author of Observations on Music, Culture and Politics, recently published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and editor of The Future of (High Culture) in America (also CSP).

The recorded works of Daniel Asia, including his five symphonies, may be heard on the labels of Summit, New World, Attacca, Albany, Babel, Innova, and Mushkatweek

Vice President; Director of Operations

Dr. Robert Edward Gordon is author of Buddhism and Architecture in America: Building for Enlightenment (2022). His writing can be found in The Wall Street Journal, the Athenaeum Review, Philosophies, Space and Culture, and Social Philosophy & Policy, and the Japanese American National Museum’s Traveling Exhibit. He holds a Ph.D. in the History of Art, an MA in Art History & Theory, and a B.A. in Philosophy. Dr. Gordon brings his expertise in matters of culture to a broad range of research interests: Asian art and philosophy, art and economics, freedom and aesthetics, art and poverty, and humanistic geography.

Chief Operating Officer

Dr. James R. Harrigan is the F.A. Hayek Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education. He is also co-host of the Words & Numbers podcast. He was formerly Managing Director of the Center for Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona, Dean of the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani, and Director of Academic Programs at the Institute for Humane Studies and Strata, where he was also Senior Research Fellow. He has written extensively for the popular press, with articles appearing everywhere from the Wall Street Journal to USA Today. He is also co-author of Cooperation & Coercion. His current work focuses on popular culture.

Artistic Fellow
Director of Technology

Dr. Joshua Nichols is a seasoned and in-demand composer for chamber ensembles and large ensembles. His recent work, Hansel und Gretel, was premiered at the University of Arizona Wind Ensemble under the direction of Dr. Chad Nicholson. Nichols was recently commissioned by The First Presbyterian Church of Baton Rouge to write What Tongue Can Tell? for chamber ensemble and choir, under the direction of Mr. Christopher Phillips.

Dr. Nichols is an Artistic Fellow at the Center for American Culture and ideas. His work involves authoring a book on listening to music, as well as producing a podcast called The Cultured Mind on arts, culture, and ideas. As a part of his fellowship, he writes new music.

Senior Fellow

Dr. Dominic Green is a historian, critic and columnist. He is a Contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a columnist for The Washington Examiner, a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (where he cohosts the First Draft podcast with Robert D. Kaplan), and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts. He writes regularly for The New Criterion, The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph and The Literary Review, and was previously editor-in-chief of The Spectator’s U.S. edition. He is the author of five books, including The Double Life of Dr. Lopez: Spies, Shakespeare and the Plot to Poison Elizabeth I, Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869-1899, and The Religious Revolution: The Birth of Modern Spirituality, 1848-1898, and has taught at Brandeis University, Boston College, and Hillsdale College, where he was the 2023 Pulliam Fellow in Journalism.

Senior Fellow

Antony Davies is currently Director of Economic Research at an investment bank in the Washington DC area. He was a tenured professor of economics and statistics, and taught at several universities from the undergraduate through the Ph.D. levels. He author (or co-authored) Understanding Statistics (Cato Institute), Principles of Microeconomics (Cognella), and Cooperation & Coercion (ISI Books). Davies has authored hundreds of op-eds appearing in, among others, the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, New York Post, and Washington Post. His educational videos have tens of millions of downloads on YouTube. Davies co-hosts the weekly podcast Words & Numbers.

In addition to his academic work, Dr. Davies was Associate Producer at the Moving Pictures Institute, Chief Financial Officer at Parabon Computation, founded several technology companies, and is co-author on a patent for distributed super-computation. Davies earned his B.S. in Economics from Saint Vincent College, and Ph.D. in Economics from the State University of New York at Albany.

Senior Fellow

Aryeh Tepper is the co-Director of the Omni-American Future Project and the Director of Publications at The American Sephardi Federation. The author of Progressive Minds, Conservative Politics: Leo Strauss’ Later Writings on Maimonides (SUNY Press, 2013), Aryeh’s essays, articles, liner notes and translations have appeared in English and Hebrew in Interpretation, The Weekly Standard, The Tel Aviv Review of Books, Moment Magazine, Mosaic Magazine, White Rose Magazine, Commentary, Ha’aretz, Maqor Rishon, Aqdamot and more. A Fellow at The Azrieli Center for Israel Studies at The Ben-Gurion Research Institute, BGU, Aryeh has lectured at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, the Columbia Center for Jazz Studies, the Mizpeh Ramon Jazz Conservatory and the University of Arizona’s online “Voices of Culture.” He is co-host of the “Straight Ahead” podcast and serves on the steering committee of the municipal archive and museum in the southern Israeli town of Ofaqim, where he lives.

Fellow

Dr. Aaron Mobley is a composer, pianist, and musicologist. He is lead faculty in music in the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies with Berkeley City College, and is a professor of music with the California Jazz Conservatory, where he teaches counterpoint and composition. He holds a doctorate in composition and theory from the University of Arizona, master degrees in music and computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, and an undergraduate degree in piano, composition and theory from Southern Methodist University.  As a composer and pianist he has performed with–and had original works premiered and commissioned by–members of the Dallas Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Voices of Change, and various ensembles and performers throughout America, Asia and Europe. Mobley has been the recipient of several distinguishing awards including an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship in the Arts, a research award in the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University and a Meadows Award, among others.

Fellow

Robert Anthony Peters is a member of SAG-AFTRA and has been acting, producing, directing, and writing professionally in theater, film, voiceover, and more for over two decades. His most recognizable film acting roles are in The Pursuit of Happyness and Steve Jobs. He writes and lectures internationally on the relationships between art, law, philosophy, and economics. He records audiobooks, is a policy advisor for the Heartland Institute, a fellow with the Archbridge Institute, and is chair of the board of the Fully Informed Jury Association. He also manages his family’s retail shipping store in Tucson, AZ. His film writing, directing, and producing debut “Tank Man” has screened in over 15 countries, 20 states, and 55 cities with over 2.3 million online views and collected over 16 awards including “best short,” “audience favorite,” and “most inspirational.” Tank Man can be found at TankManTheMovie.com. Robert can be found at RobertAnthonyPeters.com.

Fellow

Daniel Beliavsky, Ph.D., is an educator, concert pianist, music theorist, composer, and filmmaker. He has performed in Europe and throughout the United States with both orchestra and in recital—notable engagements include concerto performances with the Milwaukee and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras and the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra. His discography includes the world-premiere recording of composer Lukas Foss’s complete piano works, early works by Donald Harris and David Del Tredici, and music by J.S. Bach, Domenico Scarlatti, Franz Schubert, Frederic Chopin, and Modest Mussorgsky. Daniel’s recordings are available on all major streaming services.

Now Chair of the Fine Art and Music Department at Yeshiva University in New York City, Daniel has been a visiting professor of music theory, piano performance, aesthetics, writing about music, and history at several universities, including the City College of New York, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Stern College, Montclair State University, the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, Mannes College, and New York University.

www.youtube.com/opus1films