Speakers 2006

January - Bjorn Lomborg video lecture

Bjørn Lomborg is an associate professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. He is also a former committed environmental activist. In 1998 he published four lengthy articles about the state of our environment in the leading Danish newspaper, which resulted in a firestorm debate spanning over 400 articles in major metropolitan newspapers. The articles lead to the publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001, which has now been published in Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Korean and Japanese. Now, Lomborg is a frequent participant in the environmental discussion, with commentaries in such places as New York Times, Wall St. Journal, Globe & Mail, The Guardian, The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Times, The Australian, and the Economist. He has also appeared on TV, such places as Politically Incorrect, ABC 60 minutes, CNN, BBC, CNBC, and PBS.

In April 2004, Lomborg was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time Magazine

February - Dr. Bart Wilson, George Mason University

Bart Wilson is Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and is a member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Sciences. His fields of specialty are experimental economics, econometrics, and industrial organization. His research focuses on e-commerce, deregulated electricity markets, and antitrust.

Prior to joining the faculty at George Mason University, Professor Wilson was a research scientist at the Economic Science Laboratory at the University of Arizona. He spent a year-long stint in Washington, D.C. as an economist at Federal Trade Commission.

Professor Wilson’s recent publications include “Automated Pricing Rules in Electronic Posted Offer Markets,” with Cary A. Deck, Economic Inquiry, 41(2), April, 2003, “A Comparison of Auctions and Multilateral Negotiations,” with Charles J. Thomas, RAND Journal of Economics, 33(1), Spring, 2002, and “Bertrand-Edgeworth Competition, Demand Uncertainty, and Asymmetric Outcomes,” with Stanley S. Reynolds, Journal of Economic Theory, 92(1), May, 2000.

March - Dr. Doug Rasmussen, Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University in New York

Professor Rasmussen has been a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC. He has received research fellowships from the Center for Libertarian Studies, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Reason Foundation, and the Earhart Foundation. He also has been a recipient of a summer seminar fellowship from the National Endowment to the Humanities and has received numerous merit awards from St. John’s University. Further, he was awarded a St. John’s University medal for Outstanding Faculty Achievement in 1994.Dr. Rasmussen is a member of the American Philosophical Association and has presented and commented on session papers. He also is a member of the American Catholic Philosophical Association and has twice received (’83 and ‘84) the Matchette Award for the outstanding paper by a younger scholar at the ACPA annual meeting. He is a member of the Metaphysical Society of America and the American Association for the Philosophic Study of Society. Dr. Rasmussen has lectured throughout the United States and Europe, and he has participated in and directed many professional colloquia.

Dr. Rasmussen is a member of the American Philosophical Association and has presented and commented on session papers. He also is a member of the American Catholic Philosophical Association and has twice received (’83 and ‘84) the Matchette Award for the outstanding paper by a younger scholar at the ACPA annual meeting. He is a member of the Metaphysical Society of America and the American Association for the Philosophic Study of Society. Dr. Rasmussen has lectured throughout the United States and Europe, and he has participated in and directed many professional colloquia.

Dr. Rasmussen is one of the creators of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program at SJU. He served as its initial program coordinator and has also served on many departmental and university committees.

April - Jo Kwong, Director of Institute Relations at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Virginia.

May - Dr. Jacques Chaoulli

Dr. Jacques Chaulli is a French Canadian physician who won a health-care-related lawsuit against the government of Quebec in June 2005.

Chaoulli had alleged that the province’s regime of restrictive health-care regulations was oppressive to the point of illegality. He saw patients suffering and dying on the waiting lists of the Quebec compulsory medicare program so he studied law and represented himself before all the courts, looking to restore the freedom of private contracting in health care. The Canadian Supreme Court ultimately agreed - - and he won. This judgment might have far -reaching ramifications, challenging the constitutionality of other compulsory Medicare programs around the world.

June – June Arunga

June is a law student, activist, and director of youth programs at the Inter Region Economic Network in Nairobi, Kenya. Inter Region Economic Network is based in Nairobi, Kenya and was established to promote a pro-choice approach to public policy issues in east Africa and in Africa in general. IREN is a non-profit, non-partisan, and non-governmental organization. June is a university student in Kenya. Last summer June worked with the United Nations to organize educational programs on economics for mission staff.

July - Ivan Pongracic, professor of economics at Hillsdale CollegeDr.

Ivan Pongracic, Jr. is an associate professor of economics at Hillsdale College, where he holds the Wallace and Marion Reemelin Chair in Austrian Economics. He earned a B.S. degree in aerospace engineering from Purdue University in 1992 and a Ph.D. degree in economics from George Mason University in 2004. He was born in Croatia, at the time still part of communist Yugoslavia. His family moved to the United States in 1984, when young Ivan was fourteen. Influenced by his father’s classical liberal ideas and having experienced life under communism, he came to deeply appreciate the importance of the free markets to human liberty and prosperity. He taught at George Mason University and Indiana Wesleyan University, and worked for and been involved in various ways with many classical liberal and conservative institutions such as Foundation for Economic Education, Cato Institute, Young America’s Foundation, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the Institute for Human Studies. He just completed his sixth year of teaching at Hillsdale College.

August - Bob Chitester

Bob is President and CEO of the Palmer R. Chitester Fund, The Idea Channel, and Chitester Creative Associates Inc. He has more than forty years of experience in television management and program development. Most significantly for us, his production credits include the PBS series Free to Choose, hosted by Milton Friedman. This important TV series led directly to Dr. Friedman’s best selling book of the same name.

September - Bradley Thompson, BB&T Research Professor at Clemson University and Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism

In addition to his posts at Clemson, Bradley Thompson has also been a visiting fellow at Princeton and Harvard Universities and at the University of London. He is the author of the prize-winning book John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty. He has also edited The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams, Antislavery Political Wittings, 1833-1860: A Reader, and was an associate editor of the four-volume Encyclopedia of the Enlightment. His op-eds on various topics of public concern have appeared in newspapers around the world and his essay on “The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism” appears in the current issue of The Objective Standard. He is also completing a book project on “The Ideological Origins of American Constitutionalism“.

October - David Nott, president of Reason Foundation. Reason Foundation

David Nott is president of Reason Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing free minds and free markets. Under his leadership, Reason’s public policy experts have advised President George W. Bush, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and numerous other officials on how to shrink the burden of government.

Reason, a monthly magazine of political and cultural commentary, was named one of the “50 Best Magazines” two straight years by the Chicago Tribune and is described as “a kick-ass, no-holds-barred political magazine” by the New York Post. Nott’s professional experience includes six years as president of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he is credited with developing and implementing a business plan that led to a 250 percent increase in revenue. Nott also spearheaded the construction of Mercatus’ new Capitol Hill Campus.

Nott is a certified petroleum engineer. From 1986 to 1994, he was a senior reserve engineer at Shell California Production, Inc., coordinating the divisional capital budget, forecasting production and expenses, calculating reserves, and analyzing the profitability of projects and properties. He has written on privatization for the Institute of Economic Affairs, lectured to federal judges on the need for drug policy reform, and written commentary for the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register, San Diego Union-Tribune, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other publications. He earned a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences, with Distinction, in Economics and Petroleum Engineering from Stanford University.

November - Paul Marshall, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and at the Center for Religious Freedom, Freedom House.

Paul has testified many times before Congress, lectured at the U.S. State Department, the Helsinki Commission, Asylum Bureaus of the I.N.S., and spoken on human rights at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing. He has also lectured in Canada, England, Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, Austria, The Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Korea, Belarus, Australia, South Africa, Nigeria, Sudan, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. His latest books, released in September 2002, are God and the Constitution: Christianity and American Politics and Islam at the Crossroads: Understanding Its Beliefs, History and Conflicts. He is the author of the best-selling, award-winning survey of religious persecution worldwide titled Their Blood Cries Out, released 1997. In speeches introducing the International Religious Freedom Act in the U.S. Senate it was described as “a powerful and persuasive analysis” and an “exhaustive survey, “which simply cannot be ignored.” Marshall is also the General Editor of Religious Freedom in the World: A Global Report on Freedom and Persecution (2000), and author and editor of nineteen other books and booklets, including The Talibanization of Nigeria (2002); Heaven is not My Home (1998); A Kind of Life Imposed on Man: Vocation and Social Order from Tyndale to Locke (1996). He has also published forty scholarly articles, twenty briefs to government bodies, and hundreds of popular articles. His writings have been translated into Russian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Malay, Korean, Arabic and Chinese. He is a frequent demand for lectures and media appearances including interviews on ABC Evening News; CBS Evening News; CNN; Fox; PBS; the BBC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; and South African Broadcasting Corporation. His work has been the subject of articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Christian Science Monitor, Weekly Standard, First Things, New Republic, Globe and Mail, Christianity Today, Decision, Reader’s Digest and several hundred other newspapers and magazines. Visiting professorships include the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto; Catholic University, Washington D.C.; the Faculties of Law and of Philosophy of the Free University, Amsterdam; Satya Wacana University, Indonesia; the European University for the Humanities, Belarus; Fuller Theological Seminary; J. Omar Good Distinguished Visiting Professor, Juniata College; and adjunct Professor in the Graduate Program in Philosophy at Rutgers University. He has also been a senior fellow at the Institute of Religion and Democracy; Overseas Research Fellow for the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa; exploration geologist in the Canadian Arctic; forest fire fighter in British Columbia and an advisor to the Council of Yukon Indians.