The questions that the Brady Program tackle were central to the thinking and philanthropy of William H. Brady, one of the founding fathers of the conservative intellectual movement beginning in the 1950s and an active participant in its councils until his death in 1988. It has been central, also, to the work of AEI, which has long focused not only on immediate domestic and foreign policy problems but also on issues of culture, politics, and social thought.

In 1991, AEI's work in the field was expanded by the W. H. Brady Chair, a memorial to William Brady that supported a succession of eminent scholars and intellectual activists--Leon Kass, Christina Hoff Sommers, Lynne Cheney, Hillel Fradkin, and Sally Satel. The W. H. Brady Program in Culture and Freedom, established in 2003 by Mr. Brady's family and foundation, is designed to consolidate and expand this vital intellectual tradition. The program supports some of America's most original and courageous scholars and social critics and is intended to provide a worthy and productive memorial to the life and accomplishments of Bill Brady.

William H. Brady (1915-1988) was a prominent Milwaukee industrialist and philanthropist with wide-ranging interests in political philosophy, economics, foreign policy, and culture. He was for many years the chief executive officer of the W. H. Brady Company, known today as the Brady Corporation. Mr. Brady was a founding supporter of National Review, the Heritage Foundation, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Religion and the American Future

Religion stands at the center of many of the most pressing questions of the early twenty-first century. Western civilization may, indeed, be at an epochal inflection point: the turn from its ancestral faiths bears momentous implications for the future. This workshop, bringing together an array of thinkers from a variety of disciplines, examined the current crisis and explored avenues for its resolution.

Art, Politics, and Religion in America Today

Camille Paglia talked about the culture war, focusing on the politicization of American universities and the maligning of Western civilization by campus theorists "addicted to French or German ideas that have no relevance to American culture." She also discussed the need for students to study the Bible in order to understand great art and literature; the mediocrity and triviality of current popular culture, which is the entire cultural landscape of the young; the decline of public education into feel-good humanitarianism; and the liberal politicization of the NEA, NPR, PBS and how this has severely damaged the cause of art in the United States.

The New Neuromorality

The first panel of this conference addressed current claims of new neurotechnologies. Is there a link between neurobiology and social problems such as addiction, criminology, and social psychology? The second panel discussed legal and moral agency issues that arise out of this new neuroscience. Does this new science undermine the concept of free will? What are the ethical problems raised by our growing understanding of the neural biology of behavior, personality, and consciousness? How is neuroscience being used in the courtroom today? What impact will these discoveries have on our legal system?

	Charles Murray
	Lynne V. Cheney
	Ayaan Hirsi Ali
	Leon R. Kass
	Michael Novak
	Sally Satel
	Christina Hoff Sommers

Christopher D. Levenick is a post-doctoral fellow with the program. He has written about the Americanization of God and religious arguments in public debate.