Professor of Philosophy, St. Louis University
Reverend Michael Barber, S.J., Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, has been a member of the Society of Jesus for fifty-five years. He completed a B.A. and M.A. Saint Louis University, attended the Jesuit School of Theology in Chicago from 1976-1979, and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1979. He then pursued his doctorate in philosophy at Yale University from 1979-1985, and, after graduating, was hired in the Philosophy Department at Saint Louis University, where he has served for thirty-seven years. From 2009-2011, he was the Dean of the College of Philosophy and Letters and from 2010-2015, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He held the Hotfelder Distinguished Chair in the Humanities at Saint Louis University from 2004-2010 and the LeRoux Visiting Chair in the Humanities at Seattle University in 2017. His academic expertise has to do with the phenomenology of the social world, in particular the work of Alfred Schutz, a twentieth century philosopher who escaped Austria under Hitler’s Anschluss and took up residence in New York, teaching for nineteen years at the New School for Social Research. Barber has also written extensively on the work of Edmund Husserl, Emmanuel Levinas, Max Scheler, Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas, and Enrique Dussel. He has published seven solo-authored books, most recently Religion and Humor as Emancipating Provinces of Meaning (Springer, 2017), and his book The Participating Citizen: A Biography of Alfred Schutz (SUNY, 2004) won the Ballard Prize for the best book in phenomenology in 2007. He has edited nineteen books and published over one hundred articles in volumes from Springer, Routledge, and Oxford University Press and in journals such as Husserl Studies and Human Studies. He has held leadership roles in several international phenomenological organizations. At present he is working on a project exploring the relationship between imposed relevances (interests) and what Schutz calls "finite provinces of meaning," in particular the provinces of religious experience, music, play, and humor (especially African-American folklore). He regularly teaches courses in ethics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy and race (including philosophical texts classified by authors as part of a generalized critical race theory). He celebrates Mass weekly in Spanish for the Hispanic community of Holy Rosary Church in Fairmont City, Illinois, and belongs to the Sacred Heart Jesuit Community in St. Louis. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Partner, Shands, Elbert, Gianoulakis & Giljum, LLP
Mark Bremer has more than forty years civil litigation experience in federal and state trial and appellate courts, with an emphasis on business litigation, involving general commercial, antitrust, securities, bankruptcy, employment, education, civil rights and class action law and procedure. By way of illustration, Mr. Bremer served in a lead counsel capacity on behalf of two dozen suburban school districts in trying and ultimately settling the St. Louis School Desegregation Case, the longest-standing and most complex case in the St. Louis federal court. Mr. Bremer provides litigation representation and consultation to Fortune 500 businesses, educational institutions, employers of all types and other entities in a variety of specialized areas of law and practice.
Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large, Syndicated Columnist, Host of "The Josh Hammer Show," Article III Project Senior Counsel, Newsweek, Salem Media, Article III Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center
Josh Hammer is the senior editor-at-large of Newsweek and host of "The Josh Hammer Show," a podcast, a syndicated radio show, and TV program on Salem News Channel. A syndicated columnist through Creators Syndicate, Josh is a frequent pundit and essayist on political, legal, and cultural issues. He is also senior counsel for the Article III Project and Internet Accountability Project, as well as a Shillman Fellow with the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a fellow with the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.
An outspoken conservative, Josh opines on conservative intellectual trends, contemporary domestic and foreign policy debates, constitutional and legal issues, and the intersection of law, politics and culture. He has been published by many leading outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, Daily Mail, Newsweek, the Claremont Review of Books, National Affairs, American Affairs, The New Criterion, The National Interest, National Review, RealClearPolitics, First Things, City Journal, Public Discourse, Law & Liberty, Tablet Magazine, Deseret Magazine, Compact Magazine, Chronicles Magazine, The Spectator, The American Mind, The American Conservative, The European Conservative, American Greatness, American Compass, The Federalist, Blaze Media, TomKlingenstein.com, Townhall, The Daily Wire, The Daily Signal, The Daily Caller, The Epoch Times, Anchoring Truths, Fortune, Fox Business, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, The Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Jewish Journal. He has also had legal scholarship published by the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.
Josh is a college campus speaker through Young America's Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and a law school campus speaker through the Federalist Society. Prior to Newsweek and The Daily Wire, where he was an editor, Josh worked at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and clerked for the Hon. James C. Ho on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Josh has also served as a John Marshall Fellow with the Claremont Institute and as a Fellow with the James Wilson Institute. He is the former host of "America on Trial with Josh Hammer," a one-season daily podcast with The First that covered the unique legal issues surrounding the 2024 presidential election.
Josh graduated from Duke University, where he majored in economics, and from the University of Chicago Law School. He lives in Florida, but remains an active member of the State Bar of Texas.
Executive Director, Southeastern Legal Foundation
Kimberly Hermann serves as Executive Director for Southeastern Legal Foundation.
Kim has worked with Southeastern Legal Foundation since 2009. Her belief in liberty and desire to serve started at a young age – instilled by her parents’ dedication to hard work, family values, and love for America.
After earning her undergraduate degree in Analytical Finance and graduate degree in Accounting from Wake Forest University, Kim worked as a licensed CPA with an international accounting firm. But her strong belief in individual liberty, the rule of law, and accountability in government led her to pursue a career in law. While in law school at Georgia State University College of Law, Kim served as a law clerk at SLF. After graduating, Kim worked at a private law firm in Atlanta where she specialized in financial and business litigation but continued to serve SLF in a pro bono capacity. In 2013, Kim returned to SLF full-time and is proud to dedicate her career to the freedom-based law movement.
Kim advances liberty through litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts on issues ranging from government overreach, free speech, property rights, and economic liberty. In addition to representing clients, Kim testifies before state legislatures, drafts model legislation, and regularly publishes legal articles. Through SLF’s legal initiatives, she informs Americans about their constitutional rights, equipping them with the tools they need to stand up to government overreach. Her work and that of Southeastern Legal Foundation is regularly covered by national media and you will frequently hear or see her on radio, podcasts, and television.
Kim is an active member of the Federalist Society where she serves as an expert on the Federalist Society’s Civil Rights Executive Committee. She is also an active member of her community and when she isn’t fighting for liberty, you can find her at her children’s school or on the sports fields cheering them on. She lives in the Atlanta area with her husband and two children.
Dave Roland is the Director of Litigation and co-founder of the Freedom Center of Missouri; he also serves as the Secretary for the Freedom Center’s Board of Directors. Dave earned undergraduate degrees in Political Science and Biblical Studies at Abilene Christian University before studying law and religion at Vanderbilt University, where he received his law degree and a Master’s in Theology in 2004. While at Vanderbilt, Dave wrote a series of essays for the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center about the First Amendment and public education, and he clerked for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, DC. Following law school, Dave spent more than three years in the nation’s capital as an attorney with the Institute for Justice, where he litigated school choice, economic liberty, and property rights cases in state and federal courts. His work has been discussed in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USAToday, the Huffington Post, on Fox News and MSNBC, and other major media outlets nationwide. Since moving to Missouri in 2007, Dave has become a familiar presence on television news broadcasts, radio shows, and in newspapers across the state. He travels widely throughout the state, speaking to elected officials, student groups at colleges and law schools, Federalist Society chapters, and community groups about education, property rights, health care reform, constitutional protections for liberty, and the American Founders’ conception of virtue. Dave has also established himself as one of the preeminent election attorneys in Missouri, having won groundbreaking, precedent-setting victories in Wright-Jones v. Nasheed, Vowell v. Kander, and Franks v. Hubbard. Prior to founding the Freedom Center, he spent three years working as an attorney and policy analyst for the Show-Me Institute. Dave also previously served as the Director of the Theodore L. Stiles Center for Liberty at the Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Washington. He has been admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia, Missouri, Tennessee, and Washington, as well as before the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern District of Missouri, the Western District of Missouri, the Western District of Washington, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He lives in Mexico, Missouri, with his wife, Jenifer, and their three children. Dave can be reached at [email protected].
Professor of Philosophy, St. Louis University
Reverend Michael Barber, S.J., Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, has been a member of the Society of Jesus for fifty-five years. He completed a B.A. and M.A. Saint Louis University, attended the Jesuit School of Theology in Chicago from 1976-1979, and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1979. He then pursued his doctorate in philosophy at Yale University from 1979-1985, and, after graduating, was hired in the Philosophy Department at Saint Louis University, where he has served for thirty-seven years. From 2009-2011, he was the Dean of the College of Philosophy and Letters and from 2010-2015, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He held the Hotfelder Distinguished Chair in the Humanities at Saint Louis University from 2004-2010 and the LeRoux Visiting Chair in the Humanities at Seattle University in 2017. His academic expertise has to do with the phenomenology of the social world, in particular the work of Alfred Schutz, a twentieth century philosopher who escaped Austria under Hitler’s Anschluss and took up residence in New York, teaching for nineteen years at the New School for Social Research. Barber has also written extensively on the work of Edmund Husserl, Emmanuel Levinas, Max Scheler, Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas, and Enrique Dussel. He has published seven solo-authored books, most recently Religion and Humor as Emancipating Provinces of Meaning (Springer, 2017), and his book The Participating Citizen: A Biography of Alfred Schutz (SUNY, 2004) won the Ballard Prize for the best book in phenomenology in 2007. He has edited nineteen books and published over one hundred articles in volumes from Springer, Routledge, and Oxford University Press and in journals such as Husserl Studies and Human Studies. He has held leadership roles in several international phenomenological organizations. At present he is working on a project exploring the relationship between imposed relevances (interests) and what Schutz calls "finite provinces of meaning," in particular the provinces of religious experience, music, play, and humor (especially African-American folklore). He regularly teaches courses in ethics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy and race (including philosophical texts classified by authors as part of a generalized critical race theory). He celebrates Mass weekly in Spanish for the Hispanic community of Holy Rosary Church in Fairmont City, Illinois, and belongs to the Sacred Heart Jesuit Community in St. Louis. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Partner, Shands, Elbert, Gianoulakis & Giljum, LLP
Mark Bremer has more than forty years civil litigation experience in federal and state trial and appellate courts, with an emphasis on business litigation, involving general commercial, antitrust, securities, bankruptcy, employment, education, civil rights and class action law and procedure. By way of illustration, Mr. Bremer served in a lead counsel capacity on behalf of two dozen suburban school districts in trying and ultimately settling the St. Louis School Desegregation Case, the longest-standing and most complex case in the St. Louis federal court. Mr. Bremer provides litigation representation and consultation to Fortune 500 businesses, educational institutions, employers of all types and other entities in a variety of specialized areas of law and practice.
Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large, Syndicated Columnist, Host of "The Josh Hammer Show," Article III Project Senior Counsel, Newsweek, Salem Media, Article III Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center
Josh Hammer is the senior editor-at-large of Newsweek and host of "The Josh Hammer Show," a podcast, a syndicated radio show, and TV program on Salem News Channel. A syndicated columnist through Creators Syndicate, Josh is a frequent pundit and essayist on political, legal, and cultural issues. He is also senior counsel for the Article III Project and Internet Accountability Project, as well as a Shillman Fellow with the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a fellow with the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.
An outspoken conservative, Josh opines on conservative intellectual trends, contemporary domestic and foreign policy debates, constitutional and legal issues, and the intersection of law, politics and culture. He has been published by many leading outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, Daily Mail, Newsweek, the Claremont Review of Books, National Affairs, American Affairs, The New Criterion, The National Interest, National Review, RealClearPolitics, First Things, City Journal, Public Discourse, Law & Liberty, Tablet Magazine, Deseret Magazine, Compact Magazine, Chronicles Magazine, The Spectator, The American Mind, The American Conservative, The European Conservative, American Greatness, American Compass, The Federalist, Blaze Media, TomKlingenstein.com, Townhall, The Daily Wire, The Daily Signal, The Daily Caller, The Epoch Times, Anchoring Truths, Fortune, Fox Business, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, The Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Jewish Journal. He has also had legal scholarship published by the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.
Josh is a college campus speaker through Young America's Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and a law school campus speaker through the Federalist Society. Prior to Newsweek and The Daily Wire, where he was an editor, Josh worked at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and clerked for the Hon. James C. Ho on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Josh has also served as a John Marshall Fellow with the Claremont Institute and as a Fellow with the James Wilson Institute. He is the former host of "America on Trial with Josh Hammer," a one-season daily podcast with The First that covered the unique legal issues surrounding the 2024 presidential election.
Josh graduated from Duke University, where he majored in economics, and from the University of Chicago Law School. He lives in Florida, but remains an active member of the State Bar of Texas.
Executive Director, Southeastern Legal Foundation
Kimberly Hermann serves as Executive Director for Southeastern Legal Foundation.
Kim has worked with Southeastern Legal Foundation since 2009. Her belief in liberty and desire to serve started at a young age – instilled by her parents’ dedication to hard work, family values, and love for America.
After earning her undergraduate degree in Analytical Finance and graduate degree in Accounting from Wake Forest University, Kim worked as a licensed CPA with an international accounting firm. But her strong belief in individual liberty, the rule of law, and accountability in government led her to pursue a career in law. While in law school at Georgia State University College of Law, Kim served as a law clerk at SLF. After graduating, Kim worked at a private law firm in Atlanta where she specialized in financial and business litigation but continued to serve SLF in a pro bono capacity. In 2013, Kim returned to SLF full-time and is proud to dedicate her career to the freedom-based law movement.
Kim advances liberty through litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts on issues ranging from government overreach, free speech, property rights, and economic liberty. In addition to representing clients, Kim testifies before state legislatures, drafts model legislation, and regularly publishes legal articles. Through SLF’s legal initiatives, she informs Americans about their constitutional rights, equipping them with the tools they need to stand up to government overreach. Her work and that of Southeastern Legal Foundation is regularly covered by national media and you will frequently hear or see her on radio, podcasts, and television.
Kim is an active member of the Federalist Society where she serves as an expert on the Federalist Society’s Civil Rights Executive Committee. She is also an active member of her community and when she isn’t fighting for liberty, you can find her at her children’s school or on the sports fields cheering them on. She lives in the Atlanta area with her husband and two children.
Dave Roland is the Director of Litigation and co-founder of the Freedom Center of Missouri; he also serves as the Secretary for the Freedom Center’s Board of Directors. Dave earned undergraduate degrees in Political Science and Biblical Studies at Abilene Christian University before studying law and religion at Vanderbilt University, where he received his law degree and a Master’s in Theology in 2004. While at Vanderbilt, Dave wrote a series of essays for the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center about the First Amendment and public education, and he clerked for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, DC. Following law school, Dave spent more than three years in the nation’s capital as an attorney with the Institute for Justice, where he litigated school choice, economic liberty, and property rights cases in state and federal courts. His work has been discussed in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USAToday, the Huffington Post, on Fox News and MSNBC, and other major media outlets nationwide. Since moving to Missouri in 2007, Dave has become a familiar presence on television news broadcasts, radio shows, and in newspapers across the state. He travels widely throughout the state, speaking to elected officials, student groups at colleges and law schools, Federalist Society chapters, and community groups about education, property rights, health care reform, constitutional protections for liberty, and the American Founders’ conception of virtue. Dave has also established himself as one of the preeminent election attorneys in Missouri, having won groundbreaking, precedent-setting victories in Wright-Jones v. Nasheed, Vowell v. Kander, and Franks v. Hubbard. Prior to founding the Freedom Center, he spent three years working as an attorney and policy analyst for the Show-Me Institute. Dave also previously served as the Director of the Theodore L. Stiles Center for Liberty at the Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Washington. He has been admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia, Missouri, Tennessee, and Washington, as well as before the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern District of Missouri, the Western District of Missouri, the Western District of Washington, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He lives in Mexico, Missouri, with his wife, Jenifer, and their three children. Dave can be reached at [email protected].
Panel Three: Critical Race Theory in K-12 Public Schools
Michael Barber, Mark J. Bremer, Josh Hammer, Kimberly Hermann, Dave Roland
2022 Missouri Chapters Conference
The 2022 Missouri Chapters Conference took place on January 24, 2022, at the Missouri State...
Panel Three: Critical Race Theory in K-12 Public Schools
Michael Barber, Mark J. Bremer, Josh Hammer, Kimberly Hermann, Dave Roland
2022 Missouri Chapters Conference
The 2022 Missouri Chapters Conference took place on January 24, 2022, at the Missouri State...