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| UPCOMING SPEAKERS |
Joseph Forshaw
22 July 2010
Joseph Forshaw is president and CEO of Forshaw of St. Louis, a 140-year old family owned business specializing in the retail sale of home furnishings. It is also a manufacturer and national distributor of fireplace related building products.
Mr. Forshaw has served for several years on the advisory board of directors for the Commerce Bank of St. Louis, and is the managing partner of several family real estate partnerships. He is also a board member and Treasurer of the Show-Me-Institute.
Mr. Forshaw is an alumnus of Saint Louis University High School and received both his B.A. in economics and his J.D. degrees from Saint Louis University.
Title: “How Obama And Big Government Are Strangling Small Business”
Russell Roberts
17 June 2010
Russell Roberts is Professor of Economics at George Mason University, the J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Distinguished Scholar at the Mercatus Center, and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Before coming to George Mason University, he was at Washington University in St. Louis at the John M. Olin School of Business and at the Weidenbaum Center on The Economy, Government, and Public Policy for fourteen years. He has also taught at the University of Rochester, Stanford University, and UCLA.
Mr. Roberts is the host of the weekly podcast series, "EconTalk" and blogs at "Cafe Hayek." His latest book is The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity (Princeton University Press, 2008). Told in the form of a novel, it's the story of how prosperity is created and sustained, and the unseen order and harmony that shape our daily lives. He is author of The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance (MIT Press, 2001) a novel which discusses an array of public policy issues including corporate responsibility, consumer safety, and welfare. His first novel, The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism (Prentice Hall, 3rd edition, 2006) was named one of the top ten books of the year by Business Week and one of the best books of the year by the Financial Times when it was first published in 1994.
Mr. Roberts is a frequent commentator on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered." In addition to numerous academic publications, he has written for The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He is also a founding advisory board member of the Library of Economics and Liberty. Mr. Roberts holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.
Title: “The Future of Capitalism”
Dinesh D'Souza
5 May 2010
Dinesh D'Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Before joining the Hoover Institution, he was the John M. Olin Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In 1987-1988 he served as senior policy analyst at the Reagan White House and from 1985-1987 he was managing editor of Policy Review.
Mr. D'Souza has been called one of the top young public-policy makers in the country by Investor's Business Daily; one of America's most influential conservative thinkers by the New York Times; one of the nation's 500 leading authorities on international issues by The World Affairs Council and one of the country's most prominent Asian Americans by Newsweek. His book, What's So Great About Christianity (October 2007) and The Enemy at Home (January 2007) have been bestsellers. His books have also had a major influence on public opinion and public policy. The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno Affluence (2000) explores the social and moral implications of wealth; Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader (1997) was the first book to make the case for Reagan's intellectual and political importance and The End of Racism (1995) became one of the most controversial books of the time and a national bestseller.
Mr. D'Souza's articles have appeared in virtually every major magazine and newspaper, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, New Republic, and the National Review. He has appeared on numerous television programs, including the Today Show, Nightline, The News Hour, O'Reilly Factor, Moneyline, and Hannity and Colmes, and speaks at top universities and business groups across the country. Mr D'Souza graduated from Dartmouth College in 1983.
Title: “What's So Great About Christianity”
Martin Duggan
14 April 2010
Martin Duggan, a long-time associate and former board member of The Discussion Club, capped a 45-year newspaper career by becoming host and producer of Donnybrook, a popular affairs program on KETC Channel 9. He retired in December 2009, after twenty-three years of service, turning the reins over to Charles Brennan of KMOX Radio. For fifteen of those years, he co-hosted Beat the Press, a commentary show on KSIV Radio with Ed Macauley.
Mr. Duggan started as a summertime staffer at the St. Louis Globe Democrat in 1939 and rose to become news editor, associate managing editor and editorial page editor, leaving the paper in 1984. By appointment of President Ronald Reagan, he became chairman of the Advisory Committee on Federal Pay, a position he held for seven years.
Mr. Duggan and his wife Mae are co-founders of Citizens for Educational Freedom, the nation's first organization devoted to the right of parents to choose the schools of their choice while sharing benefits from taxes. He is past president of the Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis and The Backstoppers, and for many years has served as vice chairman of the Mathews-Dickey Boys and Girls Club. He has been designated a Distinguished Alumnus of St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas, where he received a degree in sociology in 1942. He was also among the first persons to be inducted into the St. Louis Media Halls of Fame in 2006, and was awarded an honorary degree in arts and letters by the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 2009.
Title: “Have the Media Changed for the Better? A 70 Year Perspective”
Scott A. Hodge
18 March 2010
Scott Hodge is president of the Tax Foundation and is recognized as an innovative thinker on tax policy, the federal budget and government spending. Over the past 20 years he has been a leader in many successful efforts to change public policy. During the 1990s, he led the campaign to include the $500 per child credit and capital gains tax cuts in the Contract with America. These tax cuts were the eventual centerpieces of the 1997 tax bill and the Bush tax cuts in 2001and 2003.
Mr. Hodge has been the creative force behind the Tax Foundation's Putting a Face on America's Tax Returns project and the State Business Tax Climate Index, two programs that are changing the terms of the tax debate at the federal and state level. He has written and edited three books on the federal budget and streamlining the government and has authored over 100 studies on tax policy and government spending. He has authored dozens of editorials and opinion pieces for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The Washington Times; has conducted over 600 radio and television interviews - including NBC Nightly, CNN, CBS Nightly News and C-Span and has contributed to stories on wasteful spending aired by ABC's "Prime-Time Live" and "20/20," and NBC's "Fleecing of America."
Mr. Hodge was Director of Tax and Budget Policy at Citizens for a Sound Economy before joining the Tax Foundation. He also spent ten years at The Heritage Foundation, including eight years as Heritage's Grover Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs. He began his career in Chicago where he helped found the Heartland Institute in 1984. He holds a degree in political economy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Title: “America's Fiscal Perfect Storm”
Amity Shlaes
11 February 2010
Amity Shlaes is a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations, a syndicated columnist at Bloomberg, and the author of the New York Times best-selling book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. This book was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best books to read during a financial crisis. She has written for the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, where she was an editorial board member, also for the New Yorker, Fortune, The National Review, The New Republic, and Foreign Affairs. She is a sought after keynote speaker and has given a wide range of talks about the economy and the historical perspective of the Great Depression at corporations, financial institutions, universities, and historical societies.
Ms. Shlaes has appeared on PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Comedy Central's The Daily Show, Fox News' Glenn Beck, ABC's Good Morning America, CNBC's Kudlow and Kramer, contributes to Public Radio International's Marketplace, and appears frequently on Bloomberg radio. Her book The Forgotten Man is part of a three-part history of the Twentieth Century, and has been widely praised by prominent figures such as George F. Will, Paul Volcker and Newt Gringrich, and in publications such as The New York Times, The Weekly Standard, and The National Review.
Ms. Shlaes is an award-winning journalist. She was co-winner of the Frederic Bastiat Prize (2002) and served as the J.P. Morgan Fellow for economics and finance at the American Academy in Berlin (2003). Ms Shlaes graduated from Yale University and studied at the Free University in Berlin on a DAAD fellowship following college.
Title: “Is Atlas Shrugging?”
J. Martin Rochester
14 January 2010
J. Martin Rochester is Professor of Political Science and a Fellow in the Center of International Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He has served as Chairperson of the Political Science Department in addition to teaching courses in international politics, international organization and law, and U.S. foreign policy.
Dr. Rochester has authored nine books including, Waiting for the Millennium: The United Nations and the Future of World Order; Between Two Epochs: What's Ahead for America, the World, and Global Politics in the21st Century? and Between Peril and Promise: The Politics of International Law. His latest book is U.S. Foreign Policy in the 21st Century: Gulliver's Travails. His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, and the Journal of Peace Research.
Dr. Rochester has an active interest in pedagogical concerns, including both higher education and K-12. He was one of the founders of the Consortium for International Studies Education and was project director of the International Studies Learning Package, which was designed to develop and disseminate innovative undergraduate educational materials combining the latest advances in both scholarly research and instructional technology. His international relations textbook The Global Condition (co-authored with Frederic Pearson) is now in its 4th edition and has been used in many countries and hundreds of American universities including Stanford, Duke, and the U.S. Naval Academy. He has just completed a new textbook entitled Fundamental Principles of International Relations (2010). He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Syracuse University.
Title: “U.S. Foreign Policy Under Obama: A Test of Soft Power”