Position: Vice President of College Relations, Belmont Abbey College
Contact: philipbrach@bac.edu

Philip Brach, Vice President of College Relations, has held several posts in the for-profit, nonprofit and government sectors. As Vice President of College Relations, he oversees all external relations and resource development for the College.

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Position: Executive Director, Belmont House
Contact: emmettmcgroarty@bac.edu | 202-834-7535

Emmett McGroarty is a graduate of Georgetown University (AB, Philosophy) and the Fordham University School of Law. He came to Belmont House in April 2023 from the Catholic University of America’s Institute for Human Ecology, where he was a faculty fellow and director of the program on the Constitution and Catholic Social Doctrine. Prior to that, he directed the federalism and education programs at the American Principles Project, which ignited the nationwide movement to defeat the Common Core initiative, and which was among the first policy groups to raise concern about student privacy and social emotional learning.  

Mr. McGroarty’s previous experience includes the government, non-profit, and for-profit sectors. At the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office for Community and Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, he worked on regulatory reform with the goal of increasing nonprofit engagement in social services. At the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, he served in the Trafficking in Persons Office, with responsibilities for service delivery to victims and the design of the U.S. Government’s public awareness campaign for the identification of victims; the program and its public awareness campaign won numerous awards including the Assistant Secretary’s Program Recognition Award, the Public Relations Society of America’s Silver Anvil, and PRWeek’s Silver SABRE. His past experience also includes working as a litigator in two national law firms and serving as general counsel to Phil Gramm for President. 

Mr. McGroarty is co-author of “Privacy, Property, and Third-Party Esteem in Arendt’s Constitutionalism” (Laws journal, forthcoming); Deconstructing the Administrative State: The Fight for Liberty (Liberty Hill and APPF/Sophia Press, 2018); “Controlling Education from the Top: Why Common Core Is Bad for America” (Pioneer Institute, May 2012); “Cogs in the Machine: Big Data, Common Core, and National Testing” (Pioneer Institute, May 2014). He has testified before federal and state bodies on over a dozen occasions. Mr. McGroarty is a Washington, DC, native and lives inside the Beltway with his family.

Position: Dean of the Honors College, Belmont Abbey College
Contact: josephwysocki@bac.edu | 704-461-6831

Dr. Joseph Wysocki is Dean of the Honors College and Associate Professor of Government and Political Philosophy at Belmont Abbey College. He has led the Moot Court and St. Thomas More Scholars program at the College. In 2017, he received the Adrian Faculty Excellence Award, Belmont Abbey’s highest honor for teachers. Dr. Wysocki is on the Council of Scholars of the American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE), a non-profit organization that promotes liberal arts education and offers accreditation to liberal arts institutions and programs. He is also on the Board of Advisors of the Classical Learning Test, which provides alternative standardized tests rooted in tradition.

Dr. Wysocki earned his bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from Belmont Abbey, with a double major in economics and political science. He received a doctorate of philosophy in political science from Baylor University.

Position: President, Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles
and International Human Rights Group; Faculty Fellow, Belmont House

Alfonso Aguilar is the president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, a Washington, DC based advocacy group, which promotes conservative values and ideals within the Latino community and works to integrate Latinos into fuller and more active participation and leadership in the conservative movement.  At the same time, he is the president of the International Human Rights Group, a non-profit legal foundation accredited before the Organization of American States (OAS), which seeks to defend and protect political rights, religious freedom, and the dignity of the human person through the Inter-American System of Human Rights.  In this capacity, he has served as an advisor to the Holy See’s Mission to the OAS and attended several OAS General Assemblies as a member of the Vatican’s delegation.

Mr. Aguilar is the first and former Chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Mr. Aguilar was responsible for developing and promoting public initiatives and programs to educate immigrants about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and encourage their integration into American civic culture. He led the effort to develop the new naturalization test of the United States, which took effect on October 1, 2008.

Before joining the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2003, Mr. Aguilar served in key high-level government positions in the Bush Administration and the government of Puerto Rico, including Deputy Director of Public Affairs at U.S. Department of Energy, Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration and Press Secretary to former Governor Pedro Rossello of Puerto Rico.

Mr. Aguilar is also a well known policy and political analyst.  He is quoted in major national newspapers and digital media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, Politico and the Huffington Post, and appears frequently in major national networks such as CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, Univision, Telemundo and CNN en Español.

Mr. Aguilar has a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and a J.D. from the University of Puerto Rico.  He is a member of the Puerto Rico Bar and of the Board of Governors of Americans United for Life, and Co-Chairs the Heritage Foundation President’s Hispanic Advisory Council.  He also served as a member of the Board of Advisors of the Trump 2020 Campaign’s Catholic Coalition.

Position: Editor; Faculty Fellow, Belmont House

Mark Bauerlein is an Editor at First Things and Professor of English Emeritus at Emory University, where he has taught since earning his PhD in English at UCLA in 1989. He is also a trustee at New College of Florida.  For two years (2003-05) he served as Director of the Office of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts. His books include Literary Criticism: An Autopsy (1997), The Pragmatic Mind: Explorations in the Psychology of Belief (1997), The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (2008), and The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: From Stupefied Youth to Dangerous Adults (2022). His essays have appeared in PMLA, Partisan Review, Wilson Quarterly, Commentary, and New Criterion, and his commentaries and reviews in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe, Weekly Standard, The Guardian, Chronicle of Higher Education, and other national periodicals.

Position: Attorney; Faculty Fellow, Belmont House

Jane Robbins is an attorney who worked for nine years for American Principles Project, a conservative advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. She focused on education issues (especially parental rights and student data privacy), as well as protection of religious freedom. As part of APP she testified before Congress and the legislatures of 12 states. She also co-authored the book Deconstructing the Administrative State: The Fight for Liberty (2017). 

Since her retirement, she has focused on issues related to the sexualization of children in schools and the culture in general. She currently serves, as an appointee of the Georgia Department of Education, on the Georgia Commission on Civics Education. She also serves on the board of American Achievement Testing, an organization developing a traditional U.S. history curriculum to be offered to local school districts. 

Jane graduated from Clemson University and the Harvard Law School.

Position: Faculty Fellow, Belmont House

Jeremy Wayne Tate is the founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test and a national leader in the revival of classical education. He has been featured on Fox News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Inside Higher Ed, and the New York Times. Prior to founding CLT, Jeremy served as Director of College Counseling at Mount de Sales Academy in Catonsville, Maryland. He received his Bachelor of Science in Secondary Education from Louisiana State University and a Masters in Religious Studies from Reformed Theological Seminary. Jeremy and his wife, Erin, reside in Annapolis, Maryland with their six children. You can find Jeremy on Twitter @JeremyTate41.