Dr. Poonamallee is a tenured Professor of Management & Social Innovation and Chair of the Faculty of Management at the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment & School of Undergraduate Studies, and a University Fellow at The New School. 

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is Professor of History at The New School and a historian of contemporary American politics and culture. She is the author of Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession (2023) and Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture, a frequent contributor to major media outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, MS NOW and the History Channel. A former K-12 teacher, she is the lead scholar on New York City’s Jewish American Hidden Voices curriculum and has also hosted and produced multiple podcasts. She is currently writing two books, on the history of Long Island's East End and on America's school culture wars.

Julia Sonnevend is Associate Professor of Sociology and Communications at The New School and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Communication, the flagship journal of the International Communication Association. A scholar of media, democracy, and culture, she is the author of Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics, which was named one of The New Yorker's Best Books of 2024, and Stories Without Borders: The Berlin Wall and the Making of a Global Iconic Event. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, TIME, NPR, BBC Newshour, and other leading media outlets.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies American civic and political culture. A longtime urban life scholar, he has written widely on public opinion, polarization, and American life for outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Deseret, and The Washington Post. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and an A.B. from Stanford University, and lives in New York City.   

Anna Gát is the founder and CEO of the intellectual salon platform Interintellect. Academically trained as an aesthete and dramaturg, Anna worked as a screenwriter, playwright, and cultural critic in Budapest before co-founding Hungary's leading women's rights platform Üvegplafon in 2013. Relocating to London, she launched her technology company: Interintellect builds spaces for civil, cultural conversations at scale, and it is today used by lifelong learners and prominent intellectuals worldwide. Anna is now based in New York City where she also runs her personal podcast The Hope Axis and newsletter American Innocence.

John L. Gray (EC12) is Elizabeth McMillian Director (Emeritus) of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Gray was senior vice president and manager of First Interstate Bank of Denver’s Real Estate Group and executive vice president and manager of real estate for First Interstate Bank of California before being recruited to the Small Business Administration (SBA) in Washington, D.C. At the SBA from 1997 to 1999, he served as associate Deputy Administrator for Capital Access and managed the capital and credit access programs for small businesses. He was president and CEO of the Autry National Center of the American West for 11 years before joining the National Museum of American History. Gray earned his BA at C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University, his MBA at the University of Colorado, and his MA in Eastern Classics at St. John’s College. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Occidental College in 2011. He serves on the board of Nuevo Mexico Profundo, the Exodus Dance Ensemble, and board of Visitors and Governors at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Joel Klein served as Chancellor of the New York City public schools from 2002-2011. Prior to that, he was Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust in the United States Department of Justice and Deputy White House Counsel during President Clinton’s administration. He has also held high-level executive positions in media and health care companies and practiced law in Washington, D.C., where he argued eleven cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He is the recipient of many honors and awards, and has received eleven honorary degrees including from Columbia, Duke, Dartmouth, and Amherst. In addition to chairing the board of CAE, he currently serves on numerous boards including St. John’s College, the Mind, Brain, Behavior Institute at Columbia, ExcelinEd, and Students First New York.

Robert Mass is a member of the Board of Governors of NSSR, a recent PhD graduate in philosophy from NSSR, and a Visiting Research Scholar at the Gabelli Business School of Fordham University. Prior to joining the academy he had a career in investment banking, as a Partner of Goldman Sachs, and in law, as an Assistant District Attorney for New York County. In addition to his degree from NSSR, he has a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and an A.B. in politics from University of California, Santa Cruz.

John McWhorter teaches linguistics at Columbia University, as well as music history. He specializes in language change and language contact, and is the author of The Missing Spanish Creoles, Language Simplicity and Complexity, and The Creole Debate. He has written extensively on issues related to linguistics, race, and other topics for Time, The New York Times, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic and elsewhere, and has been a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic. For the general public he is the author of The Power of Babel, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, The Language Hoax, Words on the Move, Talking Back, Talking Black, and other books, including Nine Nasty Words and Woke Racism, both of which were New York Times bestsellers. He hosts the Lexicon Valley language podcast, has authored six audiovisual sets on language for the Great Courses company, and has written weekly for The New York Times since 2021.

Claire Potter is a Professor of History emerita at The New School for Social Research in New York City, and a scholar of politics, media, and feminism. The author of two books, and two edited collections, she writes and produces the Political Junkie Substack and its weekly podcast. Potter has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, National Memo, The Guardian, Politico, The Atlantic, The Yale Review, AlterNet, Dissent, Eurozine, DAME, and The New Republic. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), listed by the New York Public Library as an “Essential Read” for the 2020 election. During her 2026-27 residency, she will be finishing New York Media Woman, a biography of journalist and radical feminist activist Susan Brownmiller, under contract to University of California Press.

Jonathan Zimmerman is Professor of History of Education and Berkowitz Professor in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. A former Peace Corps volunteer and high school teacher, Zimmerman is the author of Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools and eight other books. He is also a frequent op-ed contributor to the Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and other popular newspapers and magazines. Zimmerman previously taught for 20 years at New York University, where he received its Distinguished Teaching Award. His next book, Schooling Citizens: How Education Can Save Democracy, will be published early next year by the American Philosophical Society Press.