Liberty & Society

For Undergraduates & Recent Graduates:

June 15-21 ● Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, PA area

Antony Davies

Economics, Duquesne University
Antony Davies is associate professor of economics at Duquesne University and Mercatus Affiliated Senior Scholar at George Mason University. His primary research interests include econometrics and public policy. Davies has authored op-eds in over thirty newspapers including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and New York Daily News, is a regular columnist for US News and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and is a regular commentator on Wilkow! (TheBlaze TV). He is a frequent lecturer at policy conferences on Capitol Hill and at state capitals. In addition to teaching at the undergraduate, masters, and Ph.D. levels, Dr. Davies was Chief Analytics Officer at Parabon Computation, President and co-founder at Paragon Software (now Take-Two Interactive), and co-founder and Chief Analytics Officer at Repliqa (now Zoo Entertainment).

John Hasnas

Business, Georgetown University
John Hasnas is Associate Professor of Business at Georgetown's McDonough School of Business, Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and Director of the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics. Professor Hasnas has been a visiting scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics in Washington, DC and the Social Philosophy and Policy Center in Bowling Green, Ohio. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Lafayette College, his J.D. and Ph.D. in Legal Philosophy from Duke University, and his LL.M. in Legal Education from Temple Law School. His scholarship concerns ethics and white collar crime, jurisprudence, and legal history.

Mark LeBar

Philosophy, Ohio University in Athens
Mark LeBar is Professor of Philosophy at Ohio University in Athens, OH. He works in moral, social, and political philosophy. Mark has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Arizona, an MA in philosophy from the University of Washington, and an MBA from Pepperdine University. He received his bachelor's degree in Philosophy and English from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA. Mark has published in journals including Ethics, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. His book, The Value of Living Well (Oxford University Press, 2013) is a development of contemporary eudaimonist moral theory.

Michael Thomas

Economics, Utah State University
Michael D. Thomas is a public choice economist who earned a PhD in economics from George Mason university in 2009. He has also studied at Duke University while a fellow at the History of Political Economy Center for the academic year 2008-2009. Michael has published papers in Kyklos, the Journal of City and Town Management, the Review of Austrian Economics, and the Journal of Private Enterprise.  He has also published policy studies on the unintended consequences of regulation. He is currently working as an clinical assistant professor at Utah State University where he studies transportation economics, regulation policy, and welfare economics. 

June 22-28 ● Loyola Chicago, Chicago, IL

Andrew Cohen

Acting Director of the Jean Beer Blumenfeld Center for Ethics, Georgia State University
Andrew I. Cohen is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Jean Beer Blumenfeld Center for Ethics and Georgia State University. Convinced he had no other marketable skills and that academic life was filled with guarantees of riches and job security, he pursued and earned his PhD at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has taught in schools throughout the southeast and Midwest; the number of license plates he accumulated as a gypsy academic might show foolish tenacity or luck or something else. Georgia it is: now he’s got a wife, two kids, a mortgage, and tenure. His work now touches on themes in social contract theory, reparations and apologies for historic injustices, and global justice. He was fortunate to receive support from IHS throughout his academic career, both as a graduate student and beyond. In his spare time he lives it up in suburban domesticity. When he’s lucky he gets to go to sleep. Among his publications is Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics (co-edited with Christopher Heath Wellman) (Wiley: 2014), and a forthcoming book on ethics and public policy. 

David Friedman

Law, Santa Clara
David Friedman holds a B.A. from Harvard (Chemistry and Physics) and a PhD from the University of Chicago (Physics). He switched fields a few years later, teaching economics at VPI, UC Irvine, UCLA, Tulane, University of Chicago and Santa Clara University; as well as law (including law and economics) at the University of Chicago, Cornell and Santa Clara University. His interests include historical recreation, computers, libertarianism, home unschooling, and much else. In addition to his nonfiction books, he has written two novels: one commercially published by Baen, and another available on the Kindle. For further details see: www.daviddfriedman.com

Joshua Hall

Economics, West Virginia University
Joshua C. Hall is an associate professor of economics at West Virginia University. He earned his bachelor and master degrees in economics from Ohio University and his Ph.D. from West Virginia University in 2007. Prior to returning to his alma mater, he was the Elbert H. Neese, Jr. Professor of Economics at Beloit College. Formerly an economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, he is a co-author of the widely-cited Economic Freedom of the World reports. In addition, he is author of over 50 articles in journals such as Contemporary Economic Policy, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Economic Education, Journal of Labor Research, Southern Economic Journal, Public Finance Review, and Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.

John Phillips

Political Science, Austin Peay State University
A citizen of three countries and fluent in four languages, Dr. John Phillips teaches Political Philosophy and Comparative politics as Assistant Professor of Political Science at Austin Peay State University. His research interests range far and wide: from the impact of inequities in natural resources on international distributive justice (the subject of his dissertation) to the impact of secular public education on religious commitment (the subject of recent article). His current research projects include a book project on libertarian accounts of political authority, an attempt to rehabilitate Nozick’s view on the sanitizing properties of market transactions, and an attempt to defend a Lockean account of natural property against legal positivism. When he’s not busy teaching and researching (which is hardly ever), Dr. Phillips plays (and coaches) soccer in the Clarksville TN area.

Claudia Williamson

Economics, Mississippi State University
Claudia R. Williamson is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Mississippi State University. Her research focuses on applied microeconomics, the political economy of development, and the effectiveness of development policies, such as foreign aid. She has authored numerous articles in refereed journals including the Journal of Law and Economics, World Development, Journal of Comparative Economics, Public Choice, and Southern Economic Journal. She has also contributed multiple chapters to edited books, written book reviews, and policy briefs. 

July 13-19 ● Chapman University, Orange County, CA

Tom W. Bell

Law, Chapman University
Professor Tom W. Bell teaches intellectual property, entertainment, property, tort, contract, and commercial law courses at Chapman University School of Law, in Orange County, California.  He earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago School of Law in 1993, where he served on the Law Review and helped start another journal.   After graduating, Prof. Bell practiced first at the largest law firm in Silicon Valley and then at a boutique law firm, in Washington, D.C., that specialized in regulated infrastructure industries.   The latter gig let him him have a hand in shutting down the Interstate Commerce Commission—a rare pleasure.

Gary Chartier

Law & Business Ethics, La Sierra University
Gary Chartier is Professor of Law and Business Ethics and Associate Dean of the Tom and Vi Zapara School of Business at La Sierra University. He is the author of Anarchy and Legal Order (Cambridge 2013), Economic Justice and Natural Law (Cambridge 2009), The Conscience of an Anarchist(Cobden 2011), and The Analogy of Love (Imprint Academic 2007), as well as the co-editor (with Charles W. Johnson) of Markets Not Capitalism(Minor Compositions-Autonomedia 2011) and (with Ross M. Kenyon and Roderick T. Long) Libertarian Theories of Class (forthcoming). His byline has appeared in journals including the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Legal Theory, Law and Philosophy, the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, Ratio Juris, and the Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy. He holds a JD from UCLA (2001, Order of the Coif) and a PhD from the University of Cambridge (1991).

Brian Doherty

Senior Editor,Reason Magazine
Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine and Reason.com. Doherty is author of the books This is Burning Man (2004, Little, Brown; paperback BenBella, 2006), Radicals for Capitalism: A History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (PublicAffairs, 2007), Gun Control on Trial (Cato, 2008), and Ron Paul's Revolution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired (HarperCollins/Broadside).

Alexander Fink

Economics, University of Leipzig
Alexander Fink is an assistant professor at the Economics Department of the University of Leipzig, Germany. After receiving his PhD in Economics from George Mason University in 2011 he joined the Evolutionary Economics Group at the Max-Planck-Institute of Economics in Jena, Germany, to stay there as a postdoc for half a year before moving to the University of Leipzig. His research is on topics in Political Economy, Law and Economics, and Economic History. Motivating his work in these fields is an underlying interest in the evolution of institutions and their effects on human behavior.

Diana Thomas

Economics, Utah State University
Dr. Diana Thomas is an assistant professor of Economics at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University.  A German native, she earned her Diploma in Business Administration from Fachhochschule Aachen and her BS in Finance from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. After gaining some experience as a junior portfolio manager at a mutual fund management company in Frankfurt, Germany, Dr. Thomas returned to George Mason University to complete her MA and PhD in Economics.  She moved to Utah State University in the Fall of 2009 and has since then primarily taught classes in International Economics.

Readings »