ABOUT US
WHO IS BEHIND CALLIPOLIS?
This project was made possible by Muwaffaq Salti, the Project Patron - a strong believer in institutional improvement. The real thanks, however, goes to the academic team behind this work.
Read more about the whole team here.
Colleen A. Sheehan is Professor of Politics in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. She has served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and on the Pennsylvania State Board of Education.
She has served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and on the Pennsylvania State Board of Education.
She is the recipient of the Earhart Fellowship, Bradley Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, Mary and Kennedy Smith Fellowship of the James Madison Program of Princeton University, the Garwood Fellowship of the James Madison Program of Princeton University, the Claremont Institute Henry Salvatori Prize, and the Martin Manley Teacher of the Year Award at Villanova University, where she taught for over thirty years before joining the faculty at ASU.
Sheehan is author of James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), The Mind of James Madison: The Legacy of Classical Republicanism (Cambridge University Press, 2015), co-editor (with Gary L. McDowell) of Friends of The Constitution: Writings of the “Other” Federalists of 1787-88 (Liberty Fund Classics, 1998), (with Jack Rakove) The Cambridge Companion to The Federalist (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Other publications include articles in The American Political Science Review, William and Mary Quarterly, Review of Politics, Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, and the Wall Street Journal, American Founders: Leaders at the Creation of the Republic (Heritage Foundation, 2025).
Her current projects include; The Hartfield Footnote: An Interpretation of Jane Austen’s Emma, and “The Madisonian Moment.”
Paul A. Rahe holds The Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College, where he is Professor of History. He majored in History, the Arts and Letters at Yale University, read Litterae Humaniores at Oxford University’s Wadham College on a Rhodes Scholarship, and then returned to Yale to do his Ph.D. in ancient Greek history under the direction of Donald Kagan.
He is the author of Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (1992), Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic (2008), Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic (2009), Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect (2009).
Other works include five books on ancient Lacedaemon: The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta: The Persian Challenge (2015), The Spartan Regime: Its Character, Origins, and Grand Strategy (2016). Sparta’s First Attic War: The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta, 478-446 BC (2019), Sparta’s Second Attic War: The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta, 446-418 BC (2020).
As well as Sparta’s Sicilian Proxy War: The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta, 418-413 BC (2023), and Sparta’s Third Attic War: The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta, 413-404 BC (2024).
He is co-editor of Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on the Spirit of Laws (2001); and editor of Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy (2006).
In 2019, the Mackinder Forum conferred on Sparta’s First Attic War the Strategic Forecasting Book Award for Excellence in Geopolitical Analysis. On 11 April 2022, In recognition of his work on grand strategy, the University of Piraeus in Greece conferred on Professor Rahe its Themistocles Statesmanship Award.
Ilan Wurman is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches administrative law and constitutional law.
He previously taught at Arizona State University. He writes primarily on the Fourteenth Amendment, administrative law, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. His academic writing has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Minnesota Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Texas Law Review among other journals.
Professor Wurman is the author of a casebook, Administrative Law Theory and Fundamentals: An Integrated Approach (Foundation Press 2d ed. 2024). He is also the author of A Debt Against the Living: An Introduction to Originalism (Cambridge 2017), and The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge 2020). His next book, The Constitution of 1789: An Introduction, is also forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
Professor Wurman practices law with the firm Tully Bailey. He has litigated a variety of administrative law and constitutional law cases, including cases involving COVID-19 restrictions, transmission lines, and Appointments Clause challenges. He also devised winning public nuisance theories to force city governments to address the increasingly challenging public camping crises throughout the country.
Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how America’s political order is being upended by populist challenges, from the left and the right. He also studies populism’s impact in other democracies in the developed world.
From 2019–2023, Mr. Olsen was an opinion columnist for The Washington Post, where he wrote daily pieces focusing on politics, populism, foreign affairs and American conservative thought. He is also the author of The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism and The Four Faces of the Republican Party, co-authored with Dante Scala.
Mr. Olsen taught as the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Arizona State University for the Winter/Spring 2023 semester. He has taught at Villanova University, the Catholic University of America, and the Hillsdale College D.C. Graduate Studies Program.
Mr. Olsen was previously an editor at UnHerd.com and a regular contributor to American Greatness, City Journal, and World Magazine.
Mr. Olsen’s work has been featured in many prominent publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Guardian, and The Weekly Standard.
Mr. Olsen started his career as a political consultant at the California firm of Hoffenblum-Mollrich. He then worked with the California State Assembly Republican Caucus before attending law school. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Danny J. Boggs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and as an associate at Dechert, Price & Rhoads. He has a B.A. from Claremont McKenna College and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as Comment Editor for the University of Chicago Law Review.
Muwaffaq Salti serves as Project Patron of the Callipolis initiative.
As a Singapore-based entrepreneur with a deep commitment to systemic thinking and institutional improvement, Muwaffaq recognized the vital importance of reimagining governance structures for the modern era. While the distinguished academic creators : Colleen Sheehan, Henry Olsen, Ilan Wurman, and Paul Rahe, developed the intellectual framework, Muwaffaq provided the vision and resources to transform their constitutional scholarship from academic theory into an accessible public exploration. His belief that better systems emerge through rigorous inquiry and thoughtful design made this ambitious project possible.