Robert Maranto (Ph.D. University of Minnesota, 1989) is the 21st Century Chair in Leadership in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. He edits the Journal of School Choice and has served in government, on his local school board, and two charter boards. With others, he has produced 120 peer reviewed articles and 18 scholarly books including, most recently, The Free Inquiry Papers (2025). In recent years Education Week has recognized Maranto as one of the most influential education researchers.

Mai Thi Hong Tam is a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Studies of the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam and a lecturer in international politics and diplomacy. She holds a Ph.D. in political science specializing in international relations and public administration and completed postdoctoral studies at Florida Atlantic University. A Fulbright scholar, she earned an M.A. in international studies at Ohio University. Her research focuses on international politics, great power relations, global and regional governance, U.S. foreign policy, U.S.–Chinese competition, diplomacy, and international public administration.

Nguyen Thi Thu Hoan is First Secretary at the Embassy of Vietnam in Norway and a university lecturer in the Faculty of International Economics at the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics, specializing in international economics, from the University of Economics and Business, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. She also holds a masters degree in public affairs, specializing in international development, from Indiana University. Her research interests include economic diplomacy, international economics, and international development.

Nguyen Manh Cuong is a lecturer and senior researcher at the National University of Arts Education. He holds a Ph.D., awarded in 2023. He has participated in many science and technology projects at ministerial and provincial levels on the conservation and promotion of cultural heritage values. He is interested in conservation, digital transformation, the promotion of cultural heritage, and heritage economic development.

Muhammad Imran is an independent researcher and author from Hyderabad, Pakistan, specializing in international relations, great power competition, and European foreign policy. His previous book, The Competing Strategic Interests of China, Russia, the US, and the EU, provided a comprehensive analysis of the geopolitical strategies shaping the contemporary global order. His overall research bridges realist, liberal, and constructivist perspectives in international relations theory.

John A. Gentry is Adjunct Professor at the Institute of World Politics, in Washington, DC, and an adjunct instructor with the School of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University. He served for 12 years as an intelligence analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency and is a retired U.S. Army Reserve officer, with most assignments in special operations and intelligence arenas. Gentry has written extensively on intelligence topics book. His most recent book is Diversity Dysfunction: The DEI Threat to National Security Intelligence (Academica Press, 2025). He received his Ph.D. in political science from The George Washington University.

“Cancel culture has had many victims, but few as articulate – and as badly wronged – as Collin May. This book describes his ordeal in chilling, forensic detail, and makes clear why unjust allegations and subsequent pile-ons damage not only individuals, but society as a whole.” – David Rose, Director of Policy and Research, UK Free Speech Union

“Cancel culture was bad enough when the punishment was public shaming or a lost job. Collin May shows how its logic can become far more dangerous once regulators, tribunals, and prosecutors get involved. This book is a timely warning about the institutionalization of ideological conformity.” – Ilya Shapiro, Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute

“Collin May brings a much-needed legal eye to the emerging field of what we may call critical woke studies. While many books have mapped the intellectual lineage and ascent of cancel culture, May breaks new ground by helping us grasp the way social justice ideology has been institutionalized in policy and law. The result is what he terms prosecutorial democracy, a progressive illiberalism backed by the force of law and professional sanctions. A must-read for anyone interested in the direction of western civilization.” – Dr. Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, University of Buckingham

“The Alberta Human Rights Commission was fortunate to have such a well-qualified member as Collin May and his exit as chief of this body is a grave disservice to the people of Alberta. He has lived through the disappointment, frustration, and injustice of being cancelled, so he approaches the topic with not only a particularly well-informed academic perspective, but also an experiential one, too. This excellent and thorough monograph needs to be read, considered, and debated not only in Canada, but across the West where we claim to value diversity of thought and free expression.” – Trey Dimsdale, President, Aayan Hirsi Ali Foundation

Collin May is a Canadian lawyer and Adjunct Lecturer in Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine. He has published several articles and reviews on topics in political philosophy, cancel culture, professional regulation, and countering antisemitism. His writing has appeared in the National Post, Jerusalem Post, Law and Liberty, The Hub, C2C Journal, and such academic publications as Academic Questions and Society Journal. Educated at Harvard University, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, and Dalhousie Law School, May worked with the United Nations International Telecommunication Union and the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland, before returning to Canada to study law. In 2022, following his appointment as Chief of the Alberta Human Rights Commission, May became the target of a cancel culture campaign that cost him his job and severely damaged his career. Since that time, May has worked to combat cancellations through his writing and public advocacy.

Martin Palouš studied natural science, philosophy, and international law and was Senior Fellow and Director of the Václav Havel Program for Human Rights and Democracy at Florida International University. He is President of International Platform for Human Rights in Cuba and belonged to the original signatories of Charter 77, serving as its spokesperson in 1986, and in 1989 participated in the creation of Civic Forum during Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution. After the fall of communism, he was a member of parliament, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United States (2001-2005), and Permanent Representative of the Czech Republic to the United Nations (2006-2011). He has lectured at many universities around the world and is the author of numerous publications in political philosophy, contemporary history, international relations, and international law.

Akhmed Zakaev is the Prime Minister in Exile of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (CRI). He was born in 1959 into a family deported, along with the rest of the Chechen population, by Stalin’s regime in 1944. Zakaev graduated from acting and choreography schools in Grozny. In 1977, he was admitted to Voronezh State Academy of Arts and subsequently worked at the Chechen National Theatre. In 1994 he became Minister of Culture of the independent Chechen government of Djohar Dudaev and Commander of the Western Group for the Defense of Ichkeria. Zakaev played a crucial role in negotiations with Moscow, which led to the Russo-Chechen peace treaty of 1997, which Russia later violated. He opposed the rise of radical Islam in Chechnya, alleging a link between Islamist extremism and Russia’s covert global pro-terrorism policy. In 2002, Russia accused Zakaev, by then in exile, of involvement in a series of crimes, including the hostage-taking at a Moscow theatre in 2002 which ended in a catastrophic loss of life. In 2003, a British court declared the accusations groundless and politically motivated. On February 25, 2022, the second day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Zakaev issued a statement at a rally in defense of Ukraine before the European Parliament in Brussels. Zakaev has spoken in the European Parliament and the legislatures of Italy, Lithuania, Romania, and other countries. He is the author of Subjugate or Exterminate! (Academica Press, 2018) and Russia, Chechnya, and the West (Academica Press, 2022).

Translator: Arch Tait learned Russian in London and at Moscow State University. He holds a Ph.D. in Russian Literature from the University of Cambridge and from 1993 was UK editor of the Glas New Russian Writing translation series. He has translated more than forty books by leading Russian authors of fiction and non-fiction, including Alexei Navalny’s Patriot, which was voted Book of the Year at the 2025 British Book Awards and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography in the United States. He has translated books by Nobel Prize winners Mikhail Gorbachev and Svetlana Alexiyevich, as well as the first two volumes of the memoirs of Akhmed Zakaev.

Jayme A. Sokolow is an independent scholar and businessman who holds a Ph.D. in History from New York University. He is the author of four previous books on American history and the history of the Western Hemisphere, three eBooks on developing government proposals, and articles on history and business development. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Dr. Kawal Deep Kour holds a Ph.D. from IIT Guwahati and is a former civil servant (Assam Civil Services). She is currently Director at the SA–Drugs and Addictions Research Council, New Delhi. Dr. Kour served on the Board of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP), UK (2017–2022), and was nominated in 2023 to the Network of Experts of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC). A prolific author, she has several publications to her credit, including Ghazipur, The Opium Mint: From 1820 to the Present (Academica Press, 2023) and Opium Consumption and Experience in India: From the Earliest to Contemporary Times (Academica Press, 2023).

Ambassador Michael Gfoeller is a distinguished American diplomat, scholar, and innovative thinker with a 26-year Foreign Service career (1984–2010). Serving in Warsaw during the Cold War’s end, as well as in Moscow, Riyadh, Manama, and as Deputy Chief of Mission in Saudi Arabia (2004–2008), he navigated complex political dynamics in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. As Senior Political Advisor to General David Petraeus at U.S. Central Command (2008–2010), he shaped Middle East and Central Asia strategies. After his retirement, Gfoeller advised ExxonMobil, consulted for Henry Kissinger, and lectured at Georgetown University. An accomplished scholar, he authored books on the traditional architecture and antiquities of Armenia, where he established an archeological foundation and museum. His recent book Consciousness is Curvature (Academica Press, 2025) models human and artificial intelligence as dynamic geometric curvature in informational spaces, inspired by relativity and quantum theory. In Faster Than Light (Academica Press, 2026), he explores how recent advances in theoretical physics can enable feasible interstellar travel, inaugurating a new Age of Exploration that may never end. In Resonant Memory (Academica Press, 2026), he proposes mathematical laws of history based upon the theory of morphic resonance, the mathematics of Quantum Field Theory, and the concept of three-dimensional time.