Wheatley Fellows
Scholars and leaders working with Wheatley Institute.
Family
Religion
Constitutional Government
Ali Crandall
Ali Crandall is an Associate Professor of Public Health at Brigham Young University. Dr. Crandall received her bachelor’s degree in Community Health Education from BYU, her MPH from Loma Linda University, and her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to her Ph.D. program she worked for eight years in domestic and international settings on public health programs focused on strengthening individual health through family interventions. Her primary research interests include family health measurement, understanding how childhood experiences affect lifelong health, and mental health in adolescents and adults. She teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in program planning, evaluation, and family health. She currently serves as the BYU MPH program director.
Brian Willoughby
Brian J. Willoughby is a Professor of Family Life at Brigham Young University. He received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from BYU and then went on to receive a masters and doctoral degree in Family Social Science from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Willoughby has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on young adult development, couple dynamics, marriage, and sexuality in the leading family science, psychological and sociological journals. He is also the author of two books. Dr. Willoughby currently serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Sex Research and serves as an assistant editor for the academic journal Emerging Adulthood, as well as a consulting editor for two academic journals. His research has been widely cited in the media, appearing in such outlets as USA Today, MSNBC, the New York Post, the Washington Post, ABC News, and Psychology Today.
Jenet Jacob Erickson
Jenet Jacob Erickson is an Associate Professor of Religious Education at Brigham Young University. Her research specializing in maternal and child wellbeing has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, Slate Magazine, and the Today Show. She has authored more than 20 scientific articles and book chapters and presented at national and international conferences. In 2004, she was selected as a Social Science Research Fellow for the Heritage Foundation where she completed research analyses on non-maternal care for policymakers. Erickson received B.S. and M.A. degrees from BYU, and a Ph.D. in Family Social Science from the University of Minnesota. She is currently a columnist on family issues for the Deseret News National Edition, while she and her husband enjoy their family life journey with two young children.
Spencer L. James
Spencer L. James is an Associate Professor of Family Life and an Africana Studies affiliate at Brigham Young University. He earned a dual Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography at Penn State University. His research centers on global family relationships and how those relationships influence the wellbeing of children, adolescents, and adults. Presently, he is directing the Global Families Research Initiative, which aims to inform the curious public, policymakers, journalists, academics, and other stakeholders of current trends shaping contemporary family life across the globe. Dr. James is an internationally recognized expert on global family trends and has published articles in leading journals in family science, sociology, demography, psychology, and social work. He serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Comparative Family Studies and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Marriage and Family, Family Relations, The International Journal of African Studies, and The International Journal of Public Health and Environmental Research. Dr. James is also an internationally recognized expert on global family trends and has published articles in leading journals.
Shima Baradaran Baughman | Distinguished Fellow
Shima Baradaran Baughman is the Woodruff J. Deem Professor of Law and a Distinguished Fellow at the Wheatley Institute. She is one of the top cited faculty in her field and a nationally recognized expert on bail, prosecutors, and police. Her current scholarship examines forgiveness, prosecutorial discretion, and how religious institutions impact criminal justice reform. Read Shima Baradaran Baughman's full bio.
Joseph P. Price
Joseph Price is a Professor of Economics at Brigham Young University. He received a B.A. in Economics from BYU and a Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University. He is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics, a Senior Fellow at the Austin Institute, and the Director of the BYU Record Linking Lab. Dr. Price loves mentored research with students and has over 60 undergraduate research assistants. He has published over 50 articles including articles in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Health Economics, Demography, and Management Science. He and his wife, Emily, are the parents of seven children (including one serving a mission in Uruguay).
Justin Dyer
Justin Dyer is a Professor of Religious Education at Brigham Young University. He received his Ph.D. in human and community development from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, after which he was a postdoctoral fellow at Auburn University. In 2010 he joined the BYU School of Family Life and taught courses on family processes and statistics. He later joined the Religious Education faculty in 2015. His current research examines how religion, family, and mental health influence each other. He has recently published research on how adolescents and young adults of various faiths differ in their mental health and how their religiousness relates to their depression and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The overall focus of his work is identifying and supporting various ways religion may be helpful to individuals, families, and societies.
Loren Marks
Loren Marks is a Professor of Family Life at Brigham Young University. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from BYU, and his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware. He is Co-Director of the American Families of Faith National Research Project. From 2002-2015, he taught at Louisiana State University, where he held the Kathryn Norwood and Claude Fussell Alumni Professorship. Dr. Marks’ research foci include religion and families, including and especially racial minority families. He has authored about 170 scholarly works, including four books. Consistent with BYU’s focus on involving undergraduates in research, Dr. Marks’ student teams have won five paper of the year awards from the National Council on Family Relations’ Religion and Family Life Section. Over the last five years, he has also published about 40 public scholarship articles on religion and families, and his research has received additional attention from outlets including The New York Times, National Review, and The Washington Times. He and his wife Sandra, who also teaches at BYU, were married in 1995 and have five children.
Quin Monson
Quin Monson is Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University, the Director of BYU’s Office of Civic Engagement, and a Senior Scholar with BYU’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy. He teaches and does research in religion and politics; public opinion; campaigns and elections; and survey research methods. He is the co-author of Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014) and his research has appeared in a variety of academic journals including the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, and Political Behavior. He received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 2004.
Eva Witesman - Affiliated Scholar
Eva M. Witesman is a a professor in the Marriott School of Business at Brigham Young University, where she teaches in the Master of Public Administration and Master of Business Administration programs and serves as Academic Director of the Ballard Center for Social Impact. She created a university studies degree entitled the "Philosophy of Discovery", comparing human advances in the arts and the sciences at University of Utah. She went on to receive a MPA and PhD from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. Dr. Witesman's research explores corporate social strategy, public values, and perspectives on the nonprofit sector. Her research has appeared in top public and nonprofit administration journals. She is also the author of one book. Dr. Witeman is currently a research fellow at the Center for Organization Research and Design at Arizona State University. She serves on the editorial boards for the Public Administration Review and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory and is the division chair for the Public and Nonprofit Division of the Academy of Management.
Non-Resident Fellows
Samuel Wilkinson
Dr. Samuel Wilkinson is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and is the Associate Director of the Yale Depression Research Program. He graduated from medical school at John Hopkins University and completed his psychiatric residency training at Yale University. His research is centered on improving the quality of care for psychiatric patients and their community.
Kevin J. Worthen | Distinguished Fellow
Kevin J. Worthen served as BYU’s 13th president. Previous roles at the university included advancement vice president and dean of the Law School. In these roles, he oversaw such areas as athletics, BYU Broadcasting, LDS Philanthropies, alumni, and communications. Worthen was also The Hugh W. Colton Professor of Law, specializing in federal Indian law and the rights of indigenous peoples. Read Kevin J. Worthen's full bio.
Hal R. Boyd
Hal Boyd is the Chief of Staff for the President of BYU. He was previously the Executive Editor and Opinion Editor of the Deseret News National. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and Brigham Young University. Until April 2021, he served as Associate Professor of Family Law and Policy in Brigham Young University’s School of Family Life and Director of Family Public Scholarship. His essays have been published by The Atlantic, Newsweek, Religion & Politics, and First Things. He’s been a guest of NPR and CNN, and his commentary has been cited in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. His books include “Psalms of Nauvoo”, “Are Christians Mormon?”, and “College for the Commonwealth.”
Bradley Rebeiro
Bradley Rebeiro is an Associate Professor of Law at Brigham Young University’s Law School. He earned a B.A. from BYU, J.D. from BYU Law, and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Rebeiro’s research ranges from US constitutional history to comparative constitutional inquiries. He has published, and has articles forthcoming, in top journals, such as the Notre Dame Law Review and Brigham Young Law Review. He researches the philosophy of law, as well as the influence of political thought on constitutional jurisprudence. His book manuscript, “Natural Rights (Re)Construction: Frederick Douglass and Constitutional Abolitionism”, investigates the constitutional thought of Frederick Douglass and its influence in the antebellum period and Reconstruction.
Jeremy C. Pope
Jeremy C. Pope is a Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University. A graduate of BYU in Economics, Dr. Pope took his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford in 2004. Since then, he has worked at BYU with brief leaves at the Hoover Institution and the College of William and Mary. He teaches courses on American history, politics, political parties, the American Founding. He is also a former director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy and the current Co-Principal Investigator of the Cooperative Election Study. Pope is the co-author of “Founding Factions: How Majorities Shifted and Aligned to Shape the U.S. Constitution”, as well as the author of several articles on a range of political topics including the American Founding, political parties, public opinion, ideology, and public policy, particularly family policy. Dr. Pope is a co-founder of the annual American Family Survey, a survey containing questions about people’s family lives as well as their policy attitudes about families. Most importantly, he is the husband of Kori Pope and father of Grace, Carly, & Delaney Pope.
Andrew Johns
Andrew L. Johns is a Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He also is a part of BYU’s David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2000. His research focuses on US foreign relations and political history during the Cold War, with a particular interest in the presidency, the relationship between domestic politics and foreign policy, and the constitutional “invitation to struggle” between the executive and legislative branches. He also previously worked in the Office of the Historian in the US Department of State and taught at Gonzaga University and several universities in Southern California. He is the author and/or editor of six books. In addition to his scholarship, Dr. Johns has served as editor of an academic journal and book series. He has held elected office for multiple societies/associations of history and foreign relations and is the founding donor for the PCB-AHA’s Tonous and Warda Johns Family Book Award.
Non-Resident Fellows
Thomas B. Griffith
Thomas B. Griffith was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by President George W. Bush in 2005. He retired from the D.C. Circuit in 2020 and is currently a Lecturer on Law at the law schools at Harvard and Stanford, a member of the ABA Task Force for American Democracy, a member of the Data Protection Review Court in the Department of Justice, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Karsh Institute for Democracy at the University of Virginia. Read Thomas B. Griffith full bio.
Jeff Flake
Ambassador Jeff Flake recently served as the United States Ambassador to The Republic of Türkiye. He was confirmed without opposition by the United States Senate in October 2021. Prior to his ambassadorial service, Flake represented Arizona in the United States Senate from 2013 to 2019. He also represented Arizona in the United States House of Representatives from 2001 to 2013.
Read Jeff Flake's full bio.
Read Jeff Flake's full bio.
Affiliated Scholar
Justin Collings
Dr. Justin Collings joined the BYU faculty in 2013, when he began teaching at the J. Reuben Clark Law School. He received continuing faculty status at the Law School and was promoted to the rank of professor of law in 2019. Prior to his service as AAVP for Faculty Development, he served from 2020 to 2022 as an Associate Dean at the Law School. From January to June 2019, he was a Fulbright Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Read Dr. Justin Collings full bio.
Tyson Reeder
Tyson Reeder (Ph.D., University of California, Davis) is assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University. His research focuses on early American transnational and international history.