The Charles F. Kettering Foundation announced today the appointments of Ruth Ben-Ghiat, William Kristol, and Timothy Snyder as senior fellows, further expanding the foundation’s roster of leading democracy thinkers and practitioners drawn from across the political spectrum with distinguished careers in public service, civil society, law, journalism, and the academy.

These appointments come at a moment of heightened concern in the United States over attacks on civil rights and civil liberties, the rule of law, our system of checks and balances, and norms of government accountability to the American public. “Every day, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, William Kristol, and Timothy Snyder are helping the public recognize and respond to threats to democratic norms and principles before they become a new normal,” said Kettering Foundation President and CEO Sharon L. Davies. “Their thought leadership will help the foundation illuminate the type of actions that can take down a democracy and the strategies that can help preserve it.”

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University whose scholarship focuses on fascism, authoritarianism, propaganda, and democracy protection. She is the widely acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, which explores how strongmen leaders rise, why they succeed, and how they fall. Her research on strongmen leaders has made her a highly sought-after expert before television, radio, and online audiences. She is the recipient of Guggenheim, Fulbright, and other prestigious fellowships. She publishes Lucid, a Substack newsletter on threats to democracy in the US and abroad, with a following of over 208,000 subscribers.

William Kristol is editor-at-large of The Bulwark, where he’s lead author of the must-read daily newsletter, Morning Shots. Kristol is also the founding director of Defending Democracy Together, an organization dedicated to defending American democratic norms, principles and institutions, and is host of the video and audio podcast, Conversations with Bill Kristol. Kristol has long been recognized as a leading participant in and analyst of American politics and has helped shape the national debate on issues ranging from American foreign policy to the meaning of American conservatism. He held senior positions in the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. In 1995, Kristol founded The Weekly Standard and edited the magazine for over two decades.

Timothy Snyder, Richard C. Levin Professor Emeritus of History and Global Affairs at Yale University, currently holds the inaugural Temerty Chair in Modern European History at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. A scholar of the history of Central Europe, Ukraine, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust, Snyder’s work has received a number of prizes, including the Literature Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought, and the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding. He is the author or editor of 20 books, including the No. 1 New York Times bestseller On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons for the Twentieth Century, a guide for resisting authoritarianism adapted to the circumstances of today. Snyder also publishes Thinking About…, a Substack newsletter with over 429,000 subscribers.

Ben-Ghiat, Kristol, and Snyder join a distinguished community of Kettering Foundation fellows chosen for their distinguished contributions to democracy, including Stacey Abrams, William J. Barber II, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, James Comey, David French, Joy Harjo, Neal Katyal, María Teresa Kumar, Steven Levitsky, Sarah Longwell, J. Michael Luttig, Maureen O’Connor, Kathleen Sebelius, and Judy Woodruff.