Guest Speakers

On-Board Guest Speakers

George Gilder is the moderator of the Gilder Telecosm Forum, chairman of the Gilder Cremers Fund, LP, and a senior fellow at Discovery Institute. He previously served as a speechwriter for several officials and candidates, including Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, and Richard Nixon. He pioneered the formulation of supply-side economics when he served as chairman of the Lehrman Institute's Economic Roundtable, as program director for the Manhattan Institute, and as a frequent contributor to A.B. Laffer's economic reports. He received the White House Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence from President Reagan in 1986. He is a contributing editor of Forbes magazine and a frequent writer for several publications, including The Economist, The American Spectator, the Harvard Business Review, and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of several books, including Men and Marriage; Wealth and Poverty; Telecosm; and, most recently, The Silicon Eye.

Jonah Goldberg is a contributing editor to National Review, founding editor of National Review Online, and a member of the board of contributors of USA Today. He is a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times and his syndicated column appears regularly in the Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, and Washington Examiner, among others. He has written about politics and culture for the Times of London, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The Public Interest, and The Weekly Standard. A regular political commentator on CNN, he has served as a guest host on Crossfire and as a regular panelist on Wolf Blitzer's Late Edition, and was senior producer of the award-winning PBS series Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg. He is the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.


Michael A. Ledeen, an expert on terrorism and U.S. foreign policy, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. A former consultant to the National Security Council and to the U.S. State and Defense Departments, he has also been a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a special adviser to the Secretary of State in the Reagan administration, a senior staff member at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a professor of history at the University of Rome, Italy, and Washington University. He is a National Review Online contributing editor and a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of several books, including The War Against the Terror Masters and, most recently, The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction.


Michael Novak, a theologian, author, and former U.S. ambassador, holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, where he is Director of Social and Political Studies. Mr. Novak received B.A. degrees from Stonehill College and the Gregorian University in Rome, and an M.A. from Harvard. He has taught at Harvard, Stanford, Syracuse, and Notre Dame. He has received numerous awards, including the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion and the Antony Fisher Prize presented by Margaret Thatcher. He was co-founder of Crisis and First Things. His essays and reviews have been published in Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and National Review, among others. He is the author of 27 books, including The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism; Tell Me Why:  A Father Answers His Daughter’s Questions About God (with Jana Novak); and, most recently, Washington’s God: Religion, Liberty, and the Father of our Country. 


Larry P. Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College, received his Ph.D. in government from the Claremont Graduate School. He also studied at the London School of Economics and Oxford University. While in England, he served as director of research for Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill. He was president of the Claremont Institute from 1985-2000, where he was the founding chairman of the California Civil Rights Initiative, which prohibited racial preferences in state hiring, contracting, and admissions. He is a member of the American Political Science Association, the Mont Pelerin Society, the International Churchill Society and the Philanthropy Roundtable. Published widely, he is on the board of directors of the Heritage Foundation, the Henry Salvatori Center of Claremont McKenna College, the Center for Individual Rights and the Claremont Institute. He is the author of Liberty and Learning: The Evolution of American Education (Hillsdale College Press, 2004).


Guest Speaker for Denali Pre-Cruise Tour

Michael Barone is a FOX News contributor and senior writer for U.S. News & World Report.  He has worked for the polling firm of Peter D. Hart Research Associates and has been a member of the editorial page staff of the Washington Post and a senior staff editor at Reader’s Digest. He has written for many publications, including the Economist, the New York Times, the Detroit News, the Weekly Standard, National Review, the American Spectator, American Enterprise, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Daily Telegraph of London. He is the principal co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, and the author of Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Future of the Nation; The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again; and Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan.