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The
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Lawrence H. White
16 February 2012

Lawrence White is a professor of economics at George Mason University. Prior to his position at George Mason, he was the F. A. Hayek Professor of Economic History in the Department of Economics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He has been a visiting professor at the Queen’s School of Management and Economics, Queen’s University of Belfast, and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

Professor White is the author of The Theory of Monetary Institutions (1999), Free Banking in Britain (1995), and Competition and Currency (1989). He is the editor of several works, including The History of Gold and Silver (2000), The Crisis in American Banking (1993), African Finance: Research and Reform (1993), and Free Banking (1993). His articles on monetary theory and banking history have appeared in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Literature, the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and other leading professional journals.

Dr. White earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his AB from Harvard University.

Title: “The Clash of Economic Ideas: The Great Policy Experiments and Debate of the Last Hundred Years"

Mark Reardon
18 January 2012

Mark Reardon is nearly a 30-year radio veteran and is host of “The Mark Reardon Show” and “Total Information PM” on KMOX. On his show he covers everything from the news of the day to news out of the ordinary. Listeners hear plenty of intelligent conversation related to politics, lifestyle, sports and pop culture.

After graduating from the University of Missouri - School of Journalism, he spent the next ten years in radio and television.  His other radio stops include the former KSD-AM in St. Louis, WTMJ in Milwaukee and WGN in Chicago. He is a big movie fan, who has reviewed films for twenty-two years.  His reviews are heard on KMOX, BXR radio in Columbia, Missouri and on KMOV – Channel 4 in St. Louis. Reardon is also a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association.

Title: “Election 2012 - Media Bias in a Social Networking Age”

Marvin Olasky
16 November 2011

Marvin Olasky is editor-in-chief of WORLD Magazine and dean of the World Journalism Institute. He was provost of the King’s College in New York City from 2007 to 2011, and a professor in the University of Texas at Austin journalism department.  He is also a senior fellow of the Acton Institute and a prolific author on the topics of conservative and social policy, American culture and Christian journalism.

Olasky is the author of more than 20 books, his most famous being The Tragedy of American Compassion.  The book is an overview of poverty-fighting in America from colonial times to the 1990s. In 1995 Olasky became an occasional advisor to Texas gubernatorial candidate George W. Bush.  Bush made faith-based programs a major component of his 2000 presidential campaign, and Olasky’s academic work helped form the basis for Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.” His book eventually helped to define “compassionate  conservatism” in relation to welfare and social policy.

Olasky graduated from Yale University in 1971 with a B.A. in American Studies and he earned his Ph.D. in American Culture at the University of Michigan in 1976.  On August 22, 2011, Patrick Henry College announced Olasky’s appointment to its newly created Distinguished Chair in Journalism and Public Policy beginning in the fall semester of 2011.

Title: “Biblical and Constitutional Arguments for a Free Press”

Fred Barnes
14 September 2011

Fred Barnes is co-founder and executive editor of The Weekly Standard. From 1985 to 1995 he served as senior editor and White House correspondent for The New Republic. Before moving on to the Baltimore Sun in 1979, he covered the Supreme Court and the White House for the Washington Star. Serving as the national political correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, he also wrote the “Presswatch” media column for the American Spectator.

From 1998 to 2009 Barnes was host, along with Mort Kondracke of the Beltway Boys, on FOX News. He appears regularly on FOX Special Report with Bret Baier and was a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group. He has appeared on Fox News Sunday, CBS This Morning, Nightline, Meet the Press, Face the Nation, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He also hosts Issues in the News on Voice of America and was chief correspondent on the PBS series National Desk and host of What’s the Story? on Radio America.

Barnes is author of the book Rebel in Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush and has written for Reader’s Digest, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, Policy Review, Washingtonian, and both The Sunday Times of London and Sunday Telegraph.

Barnes graduated from the University of Virginia and was a Neiman Fellow at Harvard University.

Title: “The Political Landscape in Washington”

NOTE: FOR THIS MEETING ONLY FEES ARE
$35.00 Member, $40 Non-member, which includes dinner

John Hancock
20 July 2011

John Hancock’s political experience spans three decades in grassroots and electoral politics. He is a former state legislator, was the GOP nominee for Missouri Secretary of State in 1992 and 1996, and served as executive director for the Missouri Republican Party from 1997 to 2003. He continues providing political consultation to the state party. Under his leadership, Missouri Republicans have made historic progress. Since 1997, the state GOP has gained seats in the US House, US Senate, won historic majorities in the State House and State Senate and recaptured the Governor’s Offices.

Campaign strategy and leadership, candidate and issue research, government relations, public opinion surveys, fundraising, event planning, public relations and issue management are the principal skill sets of Hancock and his firm. He has developed and implemented the firm’s fundraising activities for its clients, ranging from presidential campaigns, the Republican National Committee, the Missouri Republican Party and numerous non-profit clients.

Hancock has worked in the public relations and media affairs industry since 1993. He served as producer of special events, including working with national and local non-profit groups such as Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the Pujols Family Foundation, Teen Challenge, and Wings of Hope. He is also a frequent radio host on KMOX-AM 1120 in St. Louis, where he co-hosts the Hancock and Kelly program, a bi-partisan political insider talk show.

Title: “The Tea Party: History, Relevance, and Future”

Phyllis Schlafly
9 June 2011

Phyllis Schlafly was one of the founders of The Discussion Club, and was named one of the 100 most important women of the 20th century by the Ladies' Home Journal. She has been a national leader of the conservative movement since the publication of her best-selling 1964 book, A Choice Not An Echo, and a leader of the pro-family movement since 1972, when she started her national volunteer organization now called Eagle Forum. In a ten-year battle, Mrs. Schlafly led the pro-family movement to victory over the principal legislative goal of the radical feminists, called the Equal Rights Amendment, and she is America's most articulate and successful opponent of the radical feminist movement.

Mrs. Schlafly's monthly newsletter call The Phyllis Schlafly Report is now in its 44th year. Her syndicated column appears in 100 newspapers, her radio commentaries are heard daily on 500 stations, and her radio talk show on education "Phyllis Schlafly Live" is heard on 70 stations.

Mrs. Schlafly is the author or editor of 20 books on various topics and her latest book is The Flipside of Feminism. She has served as a member of the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, appointed by President Reagan and has testified before more than 50 Congressional and State Legislative committees on constitutional, national defense, and family issues.

Mrs. Schlafly received her J.D. from Washington University Law School and her Master's in Political Science from Harvard University. In 2008 she was awarded an honorary degree: Doctor of Humane Letters from Washington University.

Title: “How Feminism Causes Big Government”

David Horowitz
19 May 2011

David Horowitz was one of the founders of the New Left in the 1960s and editor of its largest magazine, Rampart. He authored, with Peter Collier, the three best selling dynastic biographies, The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty, (1976), The Kennedys: An American Dream (1984) , and The Fords: An American Epic (1987). He and Collier wrote Destructive Generation (1989), a chronicle of their second thoughts about the 60s. Later Horowitz authored Radical Son (1996), a memoir tracing his odyssey from red-diaper baby to conservative activist. He continued his chronicle of the consequences of radical politics in The Politics of Bad Faith (2000), Hating Whitey (2000), Left Illusions (2003), and The Party of Defeat (2008).

In 1988, Horowitz created the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, which later was renamed the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC). The DHFC's mission is to defend the principles of individual freedom, the rule of law, private property, and limited government. It further seeks to defend free societies in the war against their enemies, and to reestablish academic freedom in American schools.

Mr. Horowitz has devoted much of his attention over the past several years to the radicalization of the American university. In 2003, he launched an academic freedom campaign to return the American university to traditional principles of open inquiry and to halt indoctrination in the classroom. To further these goals he devised an Academic Bill of Rights to protect students from abusive professors. In the same year he founded Students for Academic Freedom (SAF) and within three years was able to make intellectual diversity and academic freedom front-burner issues on college campuses across the country.

Mr. Horowitz has chronicled the radicalization of the American university and the way indoctrination has replaced education in four books, Uncivil Wars (2003), The Professors: the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (2006), Indoctrination U. (2008), One Party Classroom (2009), and most recently Reforming Our Universities (2010). He has spoken at numerous colleges and universities and has appeared on Nightline, Crossfire, the O'Reilly Factor, Good Morning America, C-Span, CNBC, Fox News Channel and MSNBC.

Title: “The Jihad in the Middle East”

Bruce Caldwell
21 April 2011

Bruce Caldwell is a Research Professor of Economics and the Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University. He has held research fellowships at New York University, Cambridge University, and the London School of Economics. He is past president of the History of Economics Society, a past Executive Director of the International Network for Economic Method, and a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. In November 2011 he will begin serving as President of the Southern Economic Association.

Professor Caldwell is the author of Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the 20th Century, first published in 1982. For the past two decades, his research has focused on the multi-faceted writings of the Nobel prize-winning economist and social theorist Friedrich A. Hayek. His intellectual biography of Hayek, Hayek's Challenge, was published in 2004 by the University of Chicago Press. Since 2002 he has been the General Editor of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, a collection of writings published jointly by the University of Chicago Press and Routledge.

Professor Caldwell received his A.B. in economics from the College of William and Mary and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.

Title: “Some Hayekian Insights For These Trying Times”

Robert A. Sirico
17 March 2011

Father Robert Sirico is known by many as a public intellectual. He received his Master of Divinity degree from the Catholic University of America, following undergraduate study at the University of Southern California and the University of London. During his studies and early ministry, he experienced a growing concern over the lack of training religious studies students receive in fundamental economic principles. As a result of this, Father Sirico co-founded the Acton Institute with Kris Mauren in 1990.

As president of the Acton Institute, Father Sirico lectures at colleges, universities, and business organizations throughout the United States and abroad. His writings are published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the London Financial Times, the Detroit News, the Washington Times, and the National Review. Father Sirico is often called upon by members of the broadcast media for statements regarding economics, civil rights, and issues of religious concern, and has provided commentary for CNN, ABC, the BBC, NPR, and CBS' 60 minutes.

In April of 1999, Father Sirico was awarded an honorary doctorate in Christian Ethics from the Franciscan University of Steubenville and in May of 2001, Universidad Francisco Marroquin awarded him an honorary doctorate in Social Sciences. He is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Mont Pelerin Society, and the Philadelphia Society, and is on the Board of Advisors of the Civic Institute in Prague.

Title: “The Moral Foundations of the Free Society”

Chester E. Finn, Jr.
17 February 2011

Chester Finn has devoted most of his career to improving education in the United States and his primary focus is the reform of primary and secondary schooling. He is a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and chairman of Hoover's Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, President of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (Thomas B. Fordham Foundation), and Senior Editor to Education Next.

Mr. Finn is also Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute; was John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute; served as founding partner and senior scholar with the Edison Project; was Professor of Education and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University and served as Assistant Secretary for Research and Improvement & Counselor to the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Education.

Mr. Finn is the author of nineteen books, his latest being Ohio's Education Reform Challenges: Lessons from the Frontlines, co-authored with Terry Ryan and Michael Lafferty. His other recent books include Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik; Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut; Leaving No Child Behind: Options for Kids in Failing Schools, co-edited with Frederick M. Hess; and The Educated Child: A Parent's Guide from Pre-School Through Eighth Grade, co-authored with William J. Bennett and John Cribb.

Mr. Finn is a frequent speaker, moderator and commentator in the national media and has authored more than 400 articles in such publications as The Weekly Standard, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, and Life and Education Next and he writes a regular column in Fordham's Education Gadfly. He holds an undergraduate degree in U.S. history, a master's degree in social studies teaching, and a doctorate in education policy, all from Harvard University.

Title: “The Promise and Limits of Education Reform”

Bill Hennessy
13 January 2011

Bill Hennessy is a South St. Louis native and best known for organizing the first St. Louis Tea Party on February 27, 2009, along with Dana Loesch of News Talk 97.1 FM radio. That tea party, one of only forty-eight held nationally, produced the second-largest turnout. What started as a one time protest became the political story of 2009 and 2010, upending both major parties.

Mr. Hennessy manages software applications for several Fortune 500 clients, primarily in the financial fields. He spent nine years in the U.S. Navy, then a short stint in the Navy reserve. He is the author of The Conservative Manifesto and Zen Conservatism; does an online column for Town Hall Forum and blogs at HennessysView.com and StLouisTeaParty.com. He has also appeared on Fox News and numerous St. Louis television and radio programs. He is a graduate of Fontbonne University.

Title: “The Tea Party and the Future”

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