Justin Litke, Ph.D.

Director

Justin B. Litke is an assistant professor of politics and a fellow of the Center for the Study of Statesmanship. He has taught at Western Kentucky University, Belmont Abbey College, and George Washington University. In 2018, he returned to teach at Catholic, his undergraduate alma mater. Dr. Litke teaches a variety of courses in American political thought and the history of political theory, focusing in particular on the nature and development of political traditions. In 2013, he published his first book, Twilight of the Republic: Empire and Exceptionalism in the American Political Tradition with the University Press of Kentucky.

He is also interested in and writing on the implications of the American political tradition for U.S. foreign policy and is currently at work on two book manuscripts. The first concerns the American tradition of republicanism and its intersections with foreign policy. The second centers on American statesman Henry Clay's work in Congress and develops a new reading of Federalist 10 alongside empirical analysis of Congressional voting. Dr. Litke has been nominated for a number of teaching awards and enjoys sharing his enthusiasm for political theory with his students. He earned the Ph.D. with Distinction from Georgetown University in 2010.

Michael Promisel, Ph.D.

Assistant Director

Michael E. Promisel is an Assistant Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America. His teaching and research examine ancient, medieval, and American traditions of political thought to ask timely questions concerning statesmanship, the virtues, liberal education, and Catholic political thought. Dr. Promisel’s research has appeared in the Review of Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Polis: The Journal of Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought, and the Political Science Reviewer. He is currently working on a book manuscript titled, “Prudence and Political Rule.”

Dr. Promisel holds a BA from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Sarah Gustafson, Ph.D.

Faculty Fellow

Sarah Gustafson is an Assistant Professor of Politics at The Catholic University of America. Her research and teaching interests focus on Alexis de Tocqueville and nineteenth century political thought, as well as the Western political philosophy tradition more broadly, contemporary and normative political theory, virtue ethics, Catholic Social and Political Thought, and Ethics and Business. 

She earned her PhD from Harvard University in 2023, where she was named a Harold Laski Fellow in 2017. She graduated First Honor (Valedictorian) from Davidson College with degrees in History and French. She also earned a MA in the History of Political Thought from Queen Mary University of London,  where she won the 2015 University of London Quentin Skinner Prize in the History of Political Thought. 

On top of her academic research and writing, she has written for several public-facing outlets and given talks at the Acton Institute, the Tocqueville Center at Furman University, and Harvard University’s Program on Constitutional Government. 

Brigid Hickman

Graduate Fellow & PhD Student, Department of Politics

Brigid Hickman is a PhD student of political theory in the Department of Politics. Her research interests focus on the application of Aristotelian-Thomistic virtue ethics, specifically the virtue of prudence, to military decision-making and civil-military relations. She is an active duty Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army and graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2011. As a military intelligence officer, Brigid has deployed twice to Afghanistan and has served in elite conventional and special operations units. She also served three years in the Pentagon, working as an assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G-2). She earned a masters in policy management from Georgetown University and is grateful to continue her education at the Catholic University of America.