On January 17, 2024, the National Civic Art Society and the Palm Beach Freedom Institute hosted "Can Federal Architecture Be Great Again?: Trump, Biden, and the Politics of Beauty," a talk by NCAS President Justin Shubow.

About the speaker: Justin Shubow is president of the National Civic Art Society, a nonprofit organization that promotes the classical tradition in public art and architecture. He is former Chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal agency comprising seven presidential appointees who are the aesthetic guardians of Washington, D.C. Shubow has testified in Congress on topics such as the future of the National Mall and the design of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial. He is the author of The Gehry Towers over Eisenhower: The National Civic Art Society Report on the Eisenhower Memorial, a critical examination of the memorial’s competition, design, and agency approval.

He has published architectural criticism at Forbes online, First Things, Public Discourse, The Washington Post, and The Weekly Standard. Shubow is a former editor at the Forward newspaper and Commentary magazine, and is a recipient of a Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship. He has delivered talks on architecture and other subjects at the U.S. Department of State, American Enterprise Institute, Baylor University, Colorado College, Hamilton College, and the Universities of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and others.

Shubow received a B.A. from Columbia University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and completed four years of study in the University of Michigan’s Ph.D. program in philosophy; he has taught philosophy courses as an instructor at the University of Michigan and Yale College. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation and the Board of Academic Advisors of the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization.