Festival Speaker Bios

Dr. Christopher Arndt

Dr. Arndt is a Professor of History and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at James Madison University. He has served as the Co-Chair of the Shenandoah Valley Regional Studies Seminar and Director of the MAD-RUSH undergraduate research conference. He earned his B.A. at Gettysburg College, his M.A. at Auburn University and his Ph.D. at Florida State University. He is the author of Doing History as well as numerous articles and essays on the Early Republic.

The Honorable Michael E. Busch

Delegate Busch is the Maryland House of Delegates Speaker and has been a Member of the House of Delegates since January 14, 1987 (House Speaker since January 8, 2003). He has been named Legislator of the Year by the Annapolis & Anne Arundel County Chamber of Commerce (2005) and Distinguished Legislator  by the Maryland Municipal League(2008, 2011). He earned his B.S. at Temple University.

Glenn Campbell

Mr. Campbell is Senior Historian at Historic Annapolis, a non-profit preservation and education organization in Maryland's capital city. He earned his M.A. at the University of Maryland and his B.S. at the United States Naval Academy. While on active duty, he served as a Naval Flight Officer and taught history at the United States Naval Academy. Mr. Campbell is currently writing an annotated transcription of the records of an elite gentlemen's club that met in Annapolis on the eve of the American Revolution.

Mark Croatti

Mr. Croatti is the Activities Director of the Annapolis Continental Congress Society and teaches courses on American Government, the Presidency, Public Policy, Comparative Politics, Canadian Politics and Native American Politics at Georgetown University, The George Washington University and The American University. In 1999, he began tutoring in the Writing Center at the United States Naval Academy and started teaching political science courses there in 2003. He has written for What's Up? Annapolis magazine and The Business Monthly  and worked five years for the journal Science.  He was a consultant to the International Program at the Howard Hughes Medical institute and a technician at the National Archives.  He served as a Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency from 1987-88. He earned his B.A. and M.A. at the University of Southern California.

The Honorable Richard D’Amato

Dick D'Amato's career and interests span nearly fifty years, from serving in senior policy positions on Capitol Hill such as the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, to elective office in the Maryland General Assembly, serving on the Appropriations Committee, to appointments to a variety of federal commissions and charitable boards. He also works for environmental and sustainable development projects. He was a naval officer, serving in the Pacific during the Viet Nam war, and an instructor at the United States Naval Academy. He retired from the Navy Reserves as a Captain. He earned a B.A. cum laude at Cornell University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law School. He is a member of the bar association in Washington, DC, Maryland and Colorado.

William Charles diGiacomantonio

Mr. diGiacomantonio is the Associate Editor of the Documentary History for The First Federal Congress Project at The George Washington University. He is also an Associate Historian for the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. He earned his M.A. from the University of Chicago and his B.S from Georgetown University.

Dr. Howard Ernst

Dr. Ernst is a full professor in the Political Science Department at the United States Naval Academy, teaching classes in environmental policy and directing the Honors Program within the Political Science Department. He also represents the University of Virginia's Center for Politics as a Senior Scholar in the area of environmental policy and directs the Environmental Leadership Program at Gettysburg College's Eisenhower Institute, where he is a Non-Resident Fellow. During the 2011-2012 academic year, Dr. Ernst served as the inaugural Director of the Kohler Environmental Center at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, CT. Dr. Ernst received his Ph.D. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia.

Len Lazarick

Mr. Lazarick  is the Editor and Publisher of MarylandReporter.com, an award-winning daily news website committed to making state government as open, transparent, accountable and responsive as possible. He has covered state and local government in Maryland for 38 years for newspapers around the state, and he spent 8 years on the national copy desk for The Washington Post.

Liz Reitzig

Ms. Reitzig is Co-founder of the Farm Food Freedom Coalition and is also active with the Maryland Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, an Annapolis-based nonprofit.

Dr. Gregory Stanton

Dr. Stanton is the President of Genocide Watch and the Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.  From 2003 to 2009, he was the James Farmer Professor in Human Rights at the University of Mary Washington, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Dr. Stanton founded Genocide Watch in 1999, was the founder (1981) and director of the Cambodian Genocide Project, and is the founder (1999) and Chair of the International Campaign to End Genocide, the world’s first anti-genocide coalition. From 2007 – 2009, he was the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Dr. Stanton served in the State Department (1992-1999), where he drafted the United Nations Security Council resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Burundi Commission of Inquiry, and the Central African Arms Flow Commission. He also drafted the U.N. Peacekeeping Operations resolutions that helped bring about an end to the Mozambique civil war. In 1994, Stanton won the American Foreign Service Association's prestigious W. Averell Harriman award for "extraordinary contributions to the practice of diplomacy exemplifying intellectual courage." Dr. Stanton has degrees from Oberlin College, Harvard Divinity School, Yale Law School, and a Doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago.

Dirk Wiker

Mr. Wiker is the Past Master of Annapolis Lodge No. 89 and now serves on a number of committees within the Freemason structure.