Thomas E. Woods, Jr., founder of Liberty Classroom, holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and his master’s, M.Phil., and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. He is the author of eleven books, most recently Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse. His other books include the New York Times bestsellers Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, as well as Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush (with Kevin R.C. Gutzman), Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, and 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask. Woods’ books have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Polish, French, German, Czech, Portuguese, Croatian, Slovak, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
Woods edited and wrote the introduction to five additional books: Back on the Road to Serfdom: The Resurgence of Statism, We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now (with Murray Polner), Murray N. Rothbard’s The Betrayal of the American Right, The Political Writings of Rufus Choate, and Orestes Brownson’s 1875 classic The American Republic. He contributed the preface to Choosing the Right College and the foreword both to Ludwig von Mises’ Liberalism and to Abel Upshur’s A Brief Enquiry into the True Nature and Character of Our Federal Government. He is also the author of Beyond Distributism, part of the Acton Institute’s Christian Social Thought Series.
Woods’ writing has appeared in dozens of popular and scholarly periodicals, including the American Historical Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Investor’s Business Daily, Catholic Historical Review, Modern Age, American Studies, Intercollegiate Review, Catholic Social Science Review, Economic Affairs (U.K.), Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Inside the Vatican, Human Events, University Bookman, Journal of Markets & Morality, New Oxford Review, Catholic World Report, Independent Review, Religion & Liberty, Journal of Libertarian Studies, Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, AD2000 (Australia), Christian Order (U.K.), and Human Rights Review.
Woods won the $50,000 first prize in the prestigious Templeton Enterprise Awards for 2006, given by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the Templeton Foundation, for his book The Church and the Market. He was the recipient of the 2004 O.P. Alford III Prize for Libertarian Scholarship and of an Olive W. Garvey Fellowship from the Independent Institute in 2003. He has also been awarded two Humane Studies Fellowships and a Claude R. Lambe Fellowship from the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University and a Richard M. Weaver Fellowship from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
Woods is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and a contributing editor of The American Conservative magazine. He has been a contributor to six encyclopedias and served as co-editor of Exploring American History: From Colonial Times to 1877, an eleven-volume encyclopedia.
Woods has appeared on CNBC, MSNBC, FOX News Channel, FOX Business Network, C-SPAN, and Bloomberg Television, among other outlets, and has been a guest on hundreds of radio programs, including National Public Radio, the Dennis Miller Show, the Michael Reagan Show, the Dennis Prager Show, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, and the Michael Medved Show. He is a regular fill-in host on The Peter Schiff Show.
Woods lives in Topeka, Kansas, with his wife and five daughters. His website is TomWoods.com.
Kevin R. C. Gutzman is a professor of history at Western Connecticut State University and the author, most recently, of Thomas Jefferson, Revolutionary: A Radical’s Struggle to Remake America (St. Martin’s, 2017) and James Madison and the Making of America (St. Martin’s, 2012). His other books are the New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution, Virginia’s American Revolution: From Dominion to Republic, 1776-1840 and (with Thomas Woods) Who Killed the Constitution? The Federal Government vs. American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama.
Gutzman has edited new editions of John Taylor of Caroline’s Tyranny Unmasked and New Views of the Constitution of the United States, and his essay “Lincoln as Jeffersonian: The Colonization Chimera” appeared in editor Brian Dirck’s collection Lincoln Emancipated: The President and the Politics of Race. More recently, his “James Madison and the Ratification of the Constitution: A Triumph over Adversity” was published in A Companion to James Madison and James Monroe.
His writing has appeared in The Journal of American History, The Journal of Southern History, The Journal of the Early Republic , The Review of Politics, The American Conservative, National Review, Modern Age, Human Events, The University Bookman, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, WorldNetDaily, Military History, The Charleston Post and Courier, The Journal of the Historical Society, LewRockwell.com, TakiMag.com, and many other publications. He has also contributed to 21 historical encyclopedias.
Gutzman has appeared on well over 100 radio programs, including syndicated shows such as the Michael Medved Show, the Janet Parshall Show, the Curtis Sliwa Show, and multiple programs on Air America, on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Mike Church Show (including as guest host), as well as on C-SPAN 2’s Book TV, CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, and Fox News’s The Glenn Beck Program. He has also been interviewed by reporters from the AP, the Washington Times, the Philadelphia Enquirer, the Washington Post, The Hartford Business Journal, the Houston Chronicle online, and the New York Times.
Gutzman has served as technical advisor to two documentary CDs and one feature film project. In addition, he was a featured expert in the documentary film “John Marshall: Citizen, Statesman, Jurist.”
Gutzman holds a B.A. in history from the University of Texas and a master’s and Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia; he also holds a master of public affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs of the University of Texas and a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. His website is KevinGutzman.com.
Brion McClanahan holds a Ph.D in American history from the University of South Carolina, where he was Clyde N. Wilson’s last doctoral student. He is the author or co-author of three books: The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, 2009), The Founding Fathers’ Guide to the Constitution (Regnery History, 2012), and Forgotten Conservatives in American History (with Clyde Wilson, Pelican, 2012). He lives with his wife and children in Phenix City, Alabama.
Jason Jewell is the chairman of the Department of Humanities at Faulkner University, where he is an associate professor. He holds a Ph.D. in Humanities from Florida State University, an M.A. in History from Pepperdine University, and a B.A. in History and Music from Harding University. At Faulkner, he teaches courses in several disciplines, including a survey sequence in the Western cultural heritage and the upper-division course sequence in European history. Jewell is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Faith and the Academy and has served as the director of Faulkner’s Institute of Faith and the Academy. Since 2005 he has been an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. His writing has appeared in numerous conservative and libertarian publications.
Jewell blogs at The Western Tradition, where he began a seven-year project to read through the Great Books of the Western World in January 2011. He lives in Montgomery, Alabama, with his wife and five homeschooled children.
Jeffrey M. Herbener is chairman of the department of economics at Grove City College, associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, and editor of The Meaning of Ludwig von Mises and The Pure Time Preference Theory of Interest.
Robert Murphy is a Research Assistant Professor at the Free Market Institute (FMI) at Texas Tech University.
Dr. Murphy earned his B.A. in economics from Hillsdale College and his Ph.D. in economics from New York University. Prior to joining Texas Tech University, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Hillsdale College, a Visiting Scholar at New York University, a Research Analyst at Laffer Associates, and a Senior Fellow with the Pacific Research Institute.
He is currently the Senior Economist at the Institute for Energy Research, where he writes a frequent column on the economics of climate change. Dr. Murphy also serves as Senior Fellow with the Fraser Institute, Associated Scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute.
He has authored numerous scholarly articles and energy policy studies, over 100 popular publications for lay audiences, and multiple books. His recent book is Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action (Independent Institute, 2015) provides an excellent introduction to the work of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises.
He and best-selling author Tom Woods also host a weekly podcast, Contra Krugman, in which they critique the New York Times column of economist Paul Krugman from alternative economic perspectives.
Gerard Casey is Professor Emeritus in the School of Philosophy at University College Dublin, Adjunct Scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute (Auburn, Alabama, USA) and a Fellow of Mises, UK. He is also a member of the Heterodox Academy and the Free Speech Union. He is the author of Born Alive, Murray Rothbard Libertarian Anarchy, Freedom’s Progress?, ZAP and After #MeToo.
Casey received his B.A. from University College Cork, then went on to receive an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame, a Bachelor of Laws from the University of London and a Master of Laws from University College Dublin. He was award the higher doctorate, DLitt, from the National University of Ireland in 2015. The DLitt degree is at the highest level awarded by the NUI, signifying a scholar of international distinction.
He was Head of the Department/School of Philosophy at University College Dublin from 2000 to 2006. He previously taught at the University of Notre Dame, 1980-1981 and at the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America, 1983-1986.
Casey serves on the editorial boards of Geopolitics, History and International Relations, Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice and Libertarian Papers, and has been a member of various professional philosophical associations, including the Royal Institute of Philosophy, the Association for Political Theory, the American Philosophical Association and the Aristotelian Society.
G.P. Manish is a professor of economics in the Sorrell College of Business at Troy University and a member of the University’s Manuel H. Johnson Center of Political Economy. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Suffolk University.
Dr. Manish’s areas of scholarly interest are development economics, economic history, monetary and business cycle theory and the history of economic thought.
Guest lecturer Hunt Tooley is Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. He specializes in Modern European History and is the author of The Western Front: Battleground and Home Front in the First World War and National Identity and Weimar Germany.
Guest lecturer Jonathan Bean is a professor of history at Southern Illinois University and a research fellow of the Independent Institute. He is the author of Beyond the Broker State: Federal Policies Toward Small Business, 1936-1961 and Big Government and Affirmative Action: The Scandalous History of the Small Business Administration, and editor of Race and History in America: The Essential Reader.
Dr. Dedra McDonald Birzer is a lecturer in history at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan. Since completed her doctoral work in the history of the American West and in Latin American history at the University of New Mexico in 2000, and has taught at Hillsdale College since then. Her courses include History of the American West, Colonial Latin American History, Modern Latin American History, History of the American Family, Classical Logic and Rhetoric, The Literary Genius of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Western Heritage, and American Heritage. Prior to 200O, Dr. Birzer taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, and at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is currently under contract for a book on Rose Wilder Lane and her cohort of public intellectual women. Dr. Birzer has published essays in the Ignatius Critical Editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights; articles in the scholarly journals American Indian Quarterly and Colonial Latin American Historical Review, and has contributions in several anthologies on the history of the American West. She has written entries for a number of specialized encyclopedias in print and online, including The Black Past, the New Catholic Encyclopedia, and Dictionary of American Biography. She writes book reviews for National Review and a number of academic journals, has recorded book discussions on Willa Cather’s My Antonia and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series with National Review’s Great Books Podcasts, and has recently published an article on National Review Online, lamenting the removal of Wilder’s name from the American Library Association award celebrating lasting contributions to children’s literature. Dr. Birzer is married to Dr. Bradley J. Birzer and mother of seven children.
Dr. Michael Rectenwald is the author of eleven books, including Thought Criminal(2020); Beyond Woke (May 2020); Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom (2019); Springtime for Snowflakes: “Social Justice” and Its Postmodern Parentage (an academic’s memoir, 2018); Nineteenth-Century British Secularism: Science, Religion and Literature (2016); Academic Writing, Real World Topics (2015, Concise Edition 2016); Global Secularisms in a Post-Secular Age (2015); Breach (Collected Poems, 2013); The Thief and Other Stories (2013); and The Eros of the Baby-Boom Eras (1991).
Michael was a Professor of Liberal Studies and Global Liberal Studies at NYU from 2008 to 2019. He also taught at Duke University, North Carolina Central University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Case Western Reserve University. He holds a Ph.D. in Literary and Cultural Studies from Carnegie Mellon University, a Master’s in English Literature from Case Western Reserve University, and a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh.
Professor Rectenwald is a pundit and champion of free speech and opposes all forms of authoritarianism and totalitarianism, including socialism-communism, “social justice,” fascism, and PC. The notorious @antipcnyuprof (now @TheAntiPCProf), he has appeared on numerous major network political talk shows (Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox & Friends, Fox & Friends First, The O’Reilly Factor, Varney & Company, The Glenn Beck Show), on syndicated radio shows (Glenn Beck and many others), and on numerous YouTube shows and podcasts.
