Speakers at FFF Events

• Dominick T. Armentano
  

  Dominick T. Armentano is professor of economics at the University of Hartford in West Hartford, Connecticut. His areas of interest include antitrust policy, industrial organization, the economics of public policy, and business and society at the graduate level.

  In 1980, Professor Armentano was a recipient of the national Leavy Foundation Award for teaching excellence. His articles and reviews have appeared in journals and newspapers such as The Antitrust Bulletin, Public Choice, London Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Professor Armentano has lectured widely to business and academic audiences, both in the U.S. and abroad. His academic lectures include invited talks at Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, Tufts, Stanford, and the UCLA Law School. He has testified before Congress (joint Economic Committee) on antitrust policy and has served as a private consultant on various regulatory matters. Between 1978 and 1985, Professor Armentano was a regular commentator on Byline, a nationally syndicated public-affairs radio program. He wrote and recorded over 125 radio shows.

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• Howard Baetjer
  

  Howard Baetjer Jr. is adjunct professor of economics at the Program on Social and Organizational Learning at George Mason University and also at Loyola College in Maryland. His main research interest is the role of capital structure evolution in economic growth. He focuses in particular on the evolution of software development. Other research interests include computational modeling of social learning processes and the use of hypertext in teaching.

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• Doug Bandow
  
  

  Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. and serves as an adjunct scholar for The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is a nationally syndicated columnist with Copley News Service and the former editor of Inquiry magazine. Before that, he served as a special assistant to President Reagan and as a senior policy analyst in the office of the president-elect and the Reagan for President campaign.

  Mr. Bandow has written and edited several books, including: The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology (Transaction); Perpetuating Poverty: The World Bank, the IMF, and the Developing World (Cato Institute); The Politics of Plunder: Misgovernment in Washington (Transaction); Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway); Human Resources and Defense Manpower (National Defense University); and The U.S.-South Korean Alliance: Time for a Change (Transaction). He has also been widely published in such periodicals as Foreign Policy, Harper's, National Interest, National Review, The New Republic, and Orbis, as well as leading newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. He has also appeared on numerous radio and television programs, most notably ABC Nightly News, American Interests, CBS Evening News, CNN Crossfire, CNN Larry King Live, Good Morning America, Nightline, and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

  Mr. Bandow received his B.S. in economics from Florida State University in 1976 and his J.D. from Stanford University in 1979.

  Mr. Bandow is a frequent contributor to FFF's journal Freedom Daily and is a frequent speaker at FFF events.

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• William W. Beach
  
  

  He is the John M. Olin Senior Fellow in Economics and director of the Center for Data Analysis (CDA) at The Heritage Foundation. As CDA Director, Beach oversees Heritage’s original statistical research on Social Security, crime, education, trade and a host of other issues, ensuring it is both rigorous in its technical scholarship and produced in time to help inform the public debate over the issue. Prior to joining Heritage in 1995, Beach held a variety of posts in the public, private and academic sectors. He served as a litigation economist with two Kansas City, Missouri, law firms-Campbell & Bysfield and Watson, Ess, Marshall & Enggas-where he specialized in analyzing how anti-trust legal remedies would alter product pricing and availability. Later, as an economist for Missouri’s Office of Budget and Planning, he designed and managed the state’s econometric model and advised the governor on revenue and economic issues. After a stint in the corporate headquarters of Sprint United, Inc., Beach moved to the Washington, D.C., area to serve as president of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University.

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• Sue A. Blevins
  
  

  Sue A. Blevins is founder and president of the Institute for Health Freedom, a nonpartisan, nonprofit Washington-based think tank. She is a leading advocate and spokesperson for consumers’ freedom to choose their health care. Ms. Blevins has appeared on television and radio shows across the country to discuss health freedom issues. She is author of the book Medicare's Midlife Crisis. Her articles about health freedom have appeared in leading newspapers such as the Investor’s Business Daily, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Times. Also, leading free-market think tanks have published her research, including the Cato Institute and the National Center for Policy Analysis.

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• David Boaz
  
  

  The Cato Institute’s executive vice president David Boaz is a provocative commentator on a broad range of political and cultural issues; he has played a key role in the development of the Cato Institute and the libertarian movement.

  He is the author of Libertarianism: A Primer, published in 1997 by the Free Press and described by The Los Angeles Times as “a well-researched manifesto of libertarian ideas,” the editor of The Libertarian Reader, and co-editor of the Cato Handbook for Congress (2001). He is a leading authority on domestic issues like education choice, drug legalization, the growth of government, and the rise of libertarianism and is a frequent guest on national television and radio shows. Boaz’s March 1988 New York Times article on the futility of the drug war touched off a national debate over the decriminalization of drugs. Some of Boaz’s op-eds have been published in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Review, and Slate. He also has appeared on ABC’s “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher,” CNN’s “Crossfire,” NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” Fox News Channel, BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other media. Boaz, a graduate of Vanderbilt University, is the former editor of New Guard magazine and was executive director of the Council for a Competitive Economy prior to joining Cato in 1981.

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• Peter J. Boettke
  
  

  Peter Boettke is Associate Professor of economics at George Mason University, editor of The Review of Austrian Economics, and Deputy Director of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy.

  His fields are Austrian economics and Comparative Political Economy. Dr. Boettke previously taught at New York University, and was also a National Fellow at the Hoover Institute, Stanford University. While he was at NYU, he won the Gold Dozen Teaching Award, the university wide recognition for teaching excellence at NYU.

  He has edited or co-edited several volumes on Austrian Economics including: The Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics and The Market Process: Essays in Contemporary Austrian Economics and Market Process Theories. He is the author of Why Perestroika Failed and The Political Economy of Soviet Socialism.

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• Donald J. Boudreaux
  
  

  Donald J. Boudreaux is Chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He’s held this position since August 2001. Previously, he was president of the Foundation for Economic Education (1997-2001); Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Economics at Clemson University (1992-1997); and Assistant Professor of Economics at George Mason University (1985-1989). During the Spring 1996 semester he was an Olin Visiting Fellow in Law and Economics at the Cornell Law School. His PhD in economics is from Auburn University (1986) and his law degree is from the University of Virginia (1992).

  He has lectured, in the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe, on a wide variety of topics, including the nature of law, antitrust law and economics, and international trade. He is published in The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Regulation, Reason, Ideas on Liberty, The Washington Times, The Journal of Commerce, Cato Journal, and several scholarly journals such as the Supreme Court Economic Review, Southern Economic Journal, Antitrust Bulletin, and Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking.

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• James Bovard
  
  

  James Bovard, who serves as a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation, is a frequent contributor to Playboy, American Spectator, and Investor's Business Daily. He has also written for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Reader's Digest, New Republic, Washington Post, Washington Times, and Newsweek.

  Mr. Bovard is the author of five books: Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, The Fair Trade Fraud, The Farm Fiasco, Shakedown: How the State Screws You from A to Z, Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State & The Demise of the Citizen, and Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Power under Clinton-Gore , most of which can be purchased at laissezfairebooks.com. and Amazon.com.

  He was the 1995 co-recipient of the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought, and the recipient of the 1996 Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. His book Lost Rights received the Mencken Award as Book of the Year from the Free Press Association.

  Since the Clinton administration took office, Mr. Bovard's writings have been publicly denounced by FBI Director Louis Freeh, HUD director Henry Cisneros, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, the White House AIDS czar, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Equal Opportunity Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as former IRS commissioner Shirley Peterson. The National Treasury Employees Union and the American Postal Workers Union have also added their condemnations.

  A Wall Street Journal review of Freedom in Chains declared: "James Bovard has become the roving inspector general of the modern State... Never has so much theoretical error and concrete folly been collected and juxtaposed so well under a single cover. Mr. Bovard consistently illuminates the connection between faulty political ideals and specific policy disasters." The Orlando Sentinel wrote: "James Bovard, the American government's most unfavorite journalist, has done all who value liberty a great service. He has meticulously documented freedom's demise in America and set it all in its proper philosophical framework. National Review declared: "Freedom in Chains... offers a principled and often eloquent vision of the minimalist state. There is an integrity to it, and it is always refreshing to find a man who takes his freedom straight." The Orange County Register labeled the book "a modern-day libertarian classic."

  Mr. Bovard's 1994 book, Lost Rights, continues to stir controversy. The Wall Street Journal said of the book: "Remarkable... astonishingly broad... excellent... Mr. Bovard's unrivaled research has resulted in a virtual encyclopedia of modern government abuse."

  Mr. Bovard has been a regular contributor to FFF's monthly journal, Freedom Daily, since 1996 and has delivered lectures at many FFF events.

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• Robert Bradley, Jr.
  
  

  Robert L. Bradley, Jr., Ph.D., is president of the Institute for Energy Research, a Houston-based non-profit organization applying a free-market perspective to energy and energy-environmental issues. He is also an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute and other market-oriented think tanks. Bradley has written several books and numerous essays on the history of energy regulation, sustainable energy development, and market approaches to energy-policy reform. He is best known for his two-volume treatise, Oil, Gas, and Government: The U.S. Experience (Cato Institute, 1996), considered the definitive work in its field. Most recently, Bradley has specialized in sustainable development energy issues, particularly global warming alarmism, which he sees as today's major challenge to free, non-politicized energy markets worldwide.

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