Recommended Speakers

Patrick F. Fagan is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Research on Marriage and Religion at the Family Research Council, where he examines the relationships among family, marriage, religion, community, and America's social problems as illustrated in the social sciences research data. The Center has a particular emphasis on the relationship between marital stability coupled with the practice of religion and their joint impacts on such issues as happiness, health, mental health and general well being, income and savings, educational attainment and family stability as well as such negative outcomes as poverty, crime, abuse, and drug addiction.

A native of Ireland, Fagan earned his Bachelor of Social Science degree with a double major in sociology and social administration, as well as a professional graduate degree in psychology, and Ph.D. in social policy from University College Dublin. Dr. Fagan has practiced in clinical psychology and has extensive experience in the public policy arena, having worked on family issues at the Free Congress Foundation and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Family and Community Policy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Before his position at the Family Research Council, Dr. Fagan was a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation for thirteen years.

Website

• This website provides links to Dr. Fagan's papers, commentaries, and primary research.

Topics of Expertise

• The impact of religious practice on social stability
• The impact of marriage and divorce on children
• Marriage as the safest place for women and children
• How strengthening marriage would reduce child poverty
• Marriage and welfare reform
• Restoring a culture of marriage
• How broken families rob children of their chances for future prosperity

Contact Dr. Fagan:

In addition to serving as President of the National Organization for Marriage, Maggie Gallagher is also president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy (www.iMAPP.org), a nonprofit organization whose unique mission is research and public education on ways that law and public policy can strengthen marriage as a social institution.

Maggie is a nationally syndicated columnist, the author of three books on marriage (including most recently with University of Chicago Prof Linda Waite "The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better-Off Financially"), and a leading voice of the new marriage movement. National Journal named her to the 2004 list of the most influential people in the same-sex marriage debate.

She appears frequently on major TV and radio and is frequently asked to lecture at colleges, universities and law schools. She has testified as an expert witness on marriage before the U.S. Senate and in various state legislatures. Her writings on marriage have appeared in The New York Times, The Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal, as well as scholarly journals such as the Louisiana Law Review, and the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy.

Maggie is a graduate of Yale (class of '82). She lives with her husband and two children in Westchester, New York.

Websites:

• National Organization for Marriage
• Institute for Marriage and Public Policy

Topics of Expertise

• Marriage and Same-sex Marriage
• "The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better-off Financially"
• Visit Maggie's archive at http://www.marriagedebate.com/archives/archives_mg.php

Contact Maggie at

Miriam Grossman, M.D, is the author of Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness Endangers Every Student, published in November 2006 by Sentinel (Penguin).

Unprotected draws on Dr. Grossman's 10 years' experience as a staff psychiatrist at UCLA Student Psychological Services. She has been interviewed on over 100 radio shows, Fox News, and 700 Club, and her book received positive reviews in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, Townhall.com, NewsMax.com, and elsewhere.

Dr. Grossman graduated cum laude from Bryn Mawr College. She attended New York University Medical School and completed her residency in psychiatry, followed by a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry, through Cornell University.

Dr. Grossman is also the author of Wonder of Becoming You: How a Jewish Girl Grows Up , published in 1988.

She lives in Los Angeles with her family and a beagle, Willie Prozac.

Personal Websites:

• www.MiriamGrossmanMD.com

Topics of Expertise:

• Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness Endangers Every Student
• You're Teaching My Child What? A physician exposes the lies of sex-ed and how they harm your child

Contact Dr. Grossman at

Dawn Eden was born to a Jewish family in New York City. When she was in high school, she lost her faith and became an agnostic. During her 20s, in the 1990s, she worked as a rock journalist, interviewing bands for music magazines. She went on to work for New York City newspapers, including the New York Post and the Daily News.

She underwent a dramatic conversion to Christianity at age 31, which eventually led her to enter the Catholic Church. With her new faith came a change in lifestyle as she discovered the truth and beauty of Christian teachings on chastity. That led to the publication of her first book, describing her personal transformation in hope of helping others make positive changes in their own lives: The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On. Now in its ninth printing, The Thrill has also been published in Spanish, Polish, and Chinese. Dawn has discussed it on NBC's "Today" show and EWTN's "Life on the Rock."  

Now living in Washington, D.C., where she is pursuing a graduate degree in theology, Dawn has spoken about chastity to college students and young-adult groups throughout North America, England, Ireland, and Poland, as well as at World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney. Colleges that have hosted her include Yale University  (as a lone voice for chastity during "Sex Week"); Dartmouth College; Georgetown University; University of California, Berkeley; Baylor University; Southern Methodist University; McGill University; University College Dublin, and Catholic University of America.

Topics of Expertise:

• The Thrill of the Chaste; Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On

Contact Dawn Eden: http://thrillofthechaste.com/contact.php

John Van Epp, PhD, therapist, former adjunct professor, author and lecturer, is the President and Founder of loveThinks, LCC, an organization dedicated to the development of resources that promote healthy individuals and relationships. The Marriage LINKS and PICK a Partner programs are two popular curricula with over five thousand instructors internationally. His book, How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk, published by McGraw-Hill, blends in-depth research with humorous stories to provide a map for making healthy relationship choices. Known for his humor and insight, he conducts numerous speaking engagements in addition to his instructor training courses. His twenty-five years of clinical experience and extensive research in premarital, marital and family relations have paved the way for his programs to be taught in thousands of churches, singles organizations, educational settings and social agencies in all fifty states, ten countries and by more than 2,500 military personnel. His book and relationship courses have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Psychology Today, O Magazine, and Cosmopolitan; and he has appeared on the CBS Early Show, the O’Reilly Factor, Fox News, and Focus on the Family. He has been happily married for over thirty years and is the proud father of two daughters. 

Website:

• www.nojerks.com

Topics of Expertise:

• How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk

Contact Dr. Van Epp at

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is the founder and President of the Ruth Institute, a non-profit educational institute promoting lifelong married love to the young by creating an intellectual and social climate favorable to marriage. She is also the Senior Research Fellow in Economics at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. She is the author of Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-up World, (2005) and Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work (2001), recently reissued in paperback, as Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.

Dr. Morse served as a Research Fellow for Stanford University's Hoover Institution from 1997-2005. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester in 1980 and spent a postdoctoral year at the University of Chicago during 1979-80. She taught economics at Yale University and George Mason University for 15 years. She was John M. Olin visiting scholar at the Cornell Law School in fall 1993. She is a regular contributor to the National Review Online, National Catholic Register, Town Hall, MercatorNet and To the Source.

Dr. Morse's scholarly articles have appeared in the Journal of Political Economy, Economic Inquiry, the Journal of Economic History, Publius: the Journal of Federalism, the University of Chicago Law Review, and the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Social Philosophy and Policy, The Independent Review, and The Notre Dame Journal of Law Ethics and Public Policy.

In the fall of 2008, Dr. Morse was a consultant for the Protect Marriage campaign in favor of Proposition 8 in California. In April 2008, Dr. Morse presented at the Harvard conference, "The Legacy and Future of Feminism." In July 2006, Dr. Morse was one of the few Americans who lectured at the Fifth Annual Meeting of Families in Valencia Spain, sponsored by the Pontifical Council on the Family. Dr. Morse lectured in Rome in April 1997 and in January 2006 at Acton Institute conferences celebrating the Papal encyclical, Centesimus Annus. Her public policy articles have appeared in Forbes, National Review, Policy Review, The American Enterprise, Fortune, Reason, the Wall Street Journal, Vital Speeches, and Religion and Liberty.

She currently lives in Vista, CA. She and her husband are the parents of a birth child, an adopted child. From March 2003 to August 2006, Dr. Morse and her husband were foster parents for San Diego County. During that time, they cared for a total of eight foster children.

Personal Websites:

• The Ruth Institute
• http://www.jennifer-roback-morse.com/index.html
• http://jennifer-roback-morse.blogspot.com/

Topics of Expertise:

• Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long Love in a Hookup World
• Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work
• Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village, Collegiate Edition
• "Why Marriage Matters"
• "The Costs of Divorce"

Contact Dr. Roback Morse at

Christopher Tollefsen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina.  He specializes in moral philosophy and practical ethics.  He is co-author, with Robert P. George, of Embryo: A Defense of Human Life and is the author of a number of papers on beginning and end of life issues.  He is a fellow of the James Madison Society, a Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, and a frequent contributor to Public Discourse.  He and his wife have nine children.

Topics of expertise:

• Chastity and the Human Good
• Marriage and Sexual Ethics
• Thinking Towards Marriage: Contraception or Natural Family Planning?
• John Paul II, Human Sexuality, and the Culture of Life

Contact Christopher Tollefsen:

Steven Rhoads has taught public policy in the politics department at the University of Virginia for over thirty five years. He received his A.B. degree cum laude from Princeton University in 1961 and an MPA degree cum laude from Cornell University in 1965. He received the Ph.D. from Cornell with a concentration in American government and political theory in 1972. He is the recipient of Bradley, Earhart, Olin, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Sloan Foundation fellowships.

In addition to his publications in professional journals, Rhoads' essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Public Interest among other outlets. He has discussed sex differences and their implications on the Today show, PBS, NPR and many commercial radio shows

For the last 20 years, Professor Rhoads has focused his studies on sex differences and their importance for an understanding of many contemporary cultural, gender and policy issues. His book, Taking Sex Differences Seriously (Encounter Books: 2004; Italian translation 2006; web site: sexdifferences.net), reflects these interests, as does Incomparable Worth: Pay Equity Meets the Market (Cambridge University Press: 1993). Earlier in his career Rhoads wrote on political economy and his The Economist's View of the World: Government, Markets and Public Policy (Cambridge University Press, 1985) was translated into Spanish and Chinese. The Chinese version of the book was selected as one of the ten best books of the year by the China Times.

Dr. Rhoads was the principal investigator for a large grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to study work-family issues faced by tenure track assistant professors with infants or toddlers. That research forms the basis for Chapter One of Taking Sex Differences Seriously.

Professor Rhoads' current teaching and research interests center on sex differences with regard to sex itself, nurturing the young, aggression, competition, communication, and cognition and on how these differences are reflected in dating, sports, marriage, parenting and the workplace. He is contemplating a book on different forms of dating/mating and believes that the sexual revolution in the West helps explain infantile males, depressive females, late marriage, fatherless families, low birth rates, the social security crisis and much else.

Topics of Expertise:

• "Taking Sex Differences Seriously"

Contact Dr. Rhoads:

• E-mail:
• University of Virginia: 434-924-7866
• Home Phone Number: 434-973-4879
• Cell Phone Number: 434-996-1510

W. Bradford Wilcox, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. He studies marriage, fatherhood, parenting, and religion. He is the author of Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (University of Chicago Press, 2004). Wilcox has also published in the American Sociological Review, the Wall Street Journal, First Things, the Weekly Standard, and the Journal of Marriage and Family. He has previously held research fellowships at the Brookings Institution, Princeton University, and Yale University. Professor Wilcox's research has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, NBC's The Today Show, and numerous NPR stations. Dr. Wilcox is married and the father of five children.

Personal Websites:

• www.wbradfordwilcox.com

Topics of Expertise:

• "Why Marriage Matters: A View from the Social Sciences"
• "Wedded Bliss: What Makes for Marital Success in Contemporary America"
• "Boys to Men: How Marriage Fosters Responsible Masculinity in Men"
• "Is Marriage a Hitting License? The Links between Cohabitation, Marriage, Child Abuse, and Domestic Violence"

Contact Professor Wilcox at