Brian Wilson

Brian Wilson has recently been wondering about the nature of mass movements in political history since his fourteen-year-old niece asked him point-blank, “What is the meaning of life?”

Brian is the founder of Combat & Classics, an online seminar series and podcast program that encourages veterans to explore “the nature of man in conflict and cooperation” through the study of great books.

After attending the United States Naval Academy and earning a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Brian served as an active duty Marine Corps Counterintelligence Officer from 2000 to 2006 and deployed to Bosnia, East Africa, and Iraq.

He taught Counterintelligence Tradecraft from 2006 to 2013 as a reserve Marine Corps officer and served as a Human Intelligence Subject Matter Expert from 2006 to 2009 for Naval Special Warfare.

During his time in Iraq, Brian was faced with unanswered questions about the nature of warfare and the people who choose, or are forced, to take part in it.

He decided to leave active duty to attend St. John’s College Graduate Institute to pursue answers to these questions. Brian graduated with a M.A. in Liberal Arts in 2013. Shortly afterward, he co-founded Combat & Classics with St. John’s College professors Jeff Black and Lise van Boxel.

Brian continues to seek a deeper understanding of humanity through the liberal arts. He has produced and directed several plays in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, served as the theater editor for the Katy Trail Weekly, and led seminars on politics and economics for the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture and the O’Neil Center at Southern Methodist University.