Senior Fellows

Robert C. Balling
Professor of Geography, Arizona State University

Robert C. Balling Jr. is a professor in the Department of Geography at Arizona State University. Dr. Balling has served as Director of the ASU Office of Climatology and has been a leader in climatology research. He has published over 70 articles in professional scientific literature, received nearly $2,000,000 in research grants, presented approximately 100 lectures throughout the United States and more than a dozen foreign countries, and appeared in a number of scientific documentaries and news features. He is presently serving as a climate consultant to the United Nations, the World Meteorological Organization, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Balling has written several books on climate change, including The Heated Debate: Greenhouse Predictions Versus Climate Reality.

Randy Barnett
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory, Georgetown University Law Center

Randy Barnett is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center. He is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and has visited at Northwestern University School of Law, the Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala, and Harvard Law School. Professor Barnett lectures internationally and appears frequently on radio and television programs, including the CBS Evening News, the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Talk of the Nation (NPR), and even the Ricki Lake Show. He has written numerous books and articles including, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law and Perspectives on Contract Law. In November 2004, Professor Barnett argued the case of Ashcroft v. Raich in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of users of cannabis for medical purposes, having previously argued the case successfully in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. On April 6, 2004, Professor Randy Barnett joined the Goldwater Institute for a discussion of his new book, Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, in which he argues that the U.S. Supreme Court has dramatically reinterpreted the Constitution to eliminate essential parts that limit governmental powers and protect basic rights.

Benjamin Barr

As a Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies, Benjamin Barr researches and analyzes issues of federalism and the constitutional rule of law, including property rights, regulation, and campaign finance. Barr has experience as a litigator before the federal courts, as a leading thinker in state constitutionalism, and as an election lawyer in Washington, DC.

As an associate with Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom, Barr challenged several unconstitutional campaign finance reform measures throughout the United States and assisted in the advancement of three election law cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He also directed the Goldwater Institute's Center for Constitutional Government and oversaw the release of several leading studies on limited government and constitutional jurisprudence. He currently works in political and election law in Washington, DC.

Barr graduated from the University of Wyoming with dual degrees in German and political science. He also studied abroad at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. Barr received his law degree from the Chicago-Kent College of Law where he served on the Moot Court Honor Society and the Journal of Intellectual Property.

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Patrick Chovanec
Associate Professor, Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management

Patrick Chovanec is an associate professor at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management in Beijing, China, where he teaches in the school's International MBA Program. His expertise is in finance, international relations, economics and political strategy. Before coming to Asia, Chovanec worked as an aide to political strategist William Kristol at Project for the Republican Future, where he helped play a key role in the defeat of the Clinton health care plan. As editor of Legislative Digest, while working for the House Republican leadership as an aide to U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner, Chovanec had a central role in coordinating passage of the “Contract with America.” Professor Chovanec first visited China in 1986, and has traveled to every one of its 31 provinces, as well as Taiwan. His travels have taken him to over 45 countries, including Pakistan, Cuba, Vietnam, and Cambodia. He is one of only a handful of U.S. citizens to have visited North Korea. His insights into Chinese business, economics, and culture have been published in the Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, Far Eastern Economic Review, and The Atlantic. He also appears frequently as a guest commentator on Chinese Central Television (CCTV-9), Al Jazeera, and China Radio International (CRI). Chovanec holds an MBA in Finance and Accounting from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, where he graduated as a Palmer Scholar, and a BA in Economics from Princeton University. Professor Chovanec has worked for several private equity funds focused on China, and continues to serve as a fund advisor. He has also served as director of Institutional Investor’s Asia Pacific Institute, based in Hong Kong, and its Global Fixed Income Institute, based in London.

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Veronique de Rugy
Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.  She was previously a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and a research fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.  In France, she directed academic programs for the Institute for Humane Studies-Europe.  Ms. de Rugy earned a MA in economics from the University of Paris IX-Dauphine and a PhD in economics from the University of Paris-Sorbonne.  She is the coauthor of numerous articles published in academic journals and is the author of Action ou Taxation, published in Switzerland in 1996.  Her research interests include the federal budget, homeland security, tax competition, bioterrorism and financial privacy issues.

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Lee Ann Elliott
Former FEC Chair

Lee Ann Elliott was appointed Commissioner of the Federal Election Commission by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate for a six-year term.  She was reappointed and confirmed in 1987.  In 1993, President William Clinton appointed her to a third term. During her 18 year tenure at the FEC she served as chairman or vice-chairman for six years.  Prior to her Federal appointments, she was Vice President of Bishop, Bryant, a political consulting firm specializing in political action committees.  Ms. Elliott served as the Associate Executive Director of the American Medical Political Action Committee for over 18 years. Ms. Elliott is a graduate of the University of Illinois.  She is a Certified Association Executive, an author, lecturer, patent holder and artist.  Since moving to Arizona in 2000 she has been appointed by two Arizona governors and confirmed by the state senate as a member of the Arizona Board of Appraisal, served 11 years as treasurer of Kids Voting USA, was on the founding board of directors of the Amblyopia Foundation, served six years as president of the Arizona chapter of the Colored Pencil Society of America, served on the Board of Trustees of the Scottsdale Artists’ School, and is currently vice chairman of Advocates for the Disabled.

Fred E. Foldvary
Professor of Economics, Santa Clara University

Fred E. Foldvary received his B.A. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University.  He has taught economics at the Latvian University of Agriculture, Virginia Tech, John F. Kennedy University, California State University at Hayward, the University of California at Berkeley Extension, and Santa Clara University.  Foldvary is the author of The Soul of Liberty, Public Goods and Private Communities, and Dictionary of Free Market Economics. He edited and contributed to Beyond Neoclassical Economics and, with Dan Klein, The Half-Life of Policy Rationales.  Foldvary's areas of research include public finance, governance, ethical philosophy, and land economics.

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Steven M. Greenhut
Director of the Investigative Journalism Center and News Bureau, Pacific Research Institute

Steven M. Greenhut is Director of the Pacific Research Institute's Investigative Journalism Center and News Bureau. He is based in Sacramento. Greenhut was a columnist and senior editorial writer for the Orange County Register for 11 years and editorial page editor for The Lima News in Ohio. He is a former building and remodeling editor for Better Homes and Gardens. He is author of the 2004 book, "Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain." His forthcoming book is called "Plunder: How Public Servants Have Become the Public's Masters." Greenhut's columns have been distributed on the McClatchy Tribune and Freedom news wires and have been printed in major newspapers around the country. He has contributed columns to the Wall Street Journal and writes for magazines including The Freeman. In 2005, Greenhut won the Institute for Justice’s Thomas Paine Award for his writing promoting freedom. He graduated from George Washington University. He is married and has three daughters.

James D. Gwartney
Director, Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education at Florida State University

James D. Gwartney holds the Gus A. Stavros Eminent Scholar Chair at Florida State University, where he directs the Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education. He served as chief economist of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress from 1999-2000. He is the co-author of Economics: Private and Public Choice and Economic Freedom of the World, a worldwide annual report on the institutions and policies of more than 120 countries. His publications have appeared in both professional journals and popular media such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. A member of the Mont Pelerin Society, he was invited by the incoming Putin Administration in March 2000 to make presentations and have discussions with leading Russian economists concerning the future of the Russian economy. In 2004 he was the recipient of the Adam Smith Award of the Association of Private Enterprise Education for his contribution to the advancement of free market ideals. In addition, Gwartney held the distinguished position of Chairman of Youth for Goldwater in Washington State during Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign.

Email: James D. Gwartney

Alan Charles Kors
Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania

Alan Charles Kors teaches European intellectual history at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is professor of history and holds the George H. Walker Endowed Term Chair. Kors has fought for academic freedom since his arrival at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1993, he defended Eden Jacobowitz in the infamous "water buffalo case," which led to the writing of The Shadow University and to the founding of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a non-profit organization whose mission is to defend and sustain individual rights at America's increasingly repressive and partisan colleges and universities. Kors has been elected four times to University and School Committees on Academic Freedom and Responsibility by his colleagues. He has received two awards for distinguished college teaching and numerous awards for his defense of academic freedom. He has also written and lectured widely on the assault upon liberty and freedom of conscience on America's campuses. Kors has published extensively on the conceptual revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, and produced three taped series on the period for The Teaching Company. He was editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment in 2002. Kors holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He is married with two children, and lives in suburban Philadelphia.

Dan Lips
Senior Policy Analyst, Domestic Policy, The Heritage Foundation

Dan Lips is a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, where he writes on federal and state education policy. Before joining Heritage, Lips was a founder and president of the Arizona Dream Foundation, where he worked to promote school choice in Arizona. He also has worked for the Cato Institute and Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Lips is the author of numerous studies and opinion pieces that have been published in newspapers across the nation. Lips is also the co-author of The Reagan Vision: How You Can Revive the Reagan Revolution. He graduated with honors from Princeton University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in politics.

Email: Dan Lips

Carrie Lukas
Vice President for Policy and Economics, Independent Women's Forum

Carrie Lukas is the vice president for policy and economics for the Independent Women's Forum (IWF), an organization dedicated to advancing the spirit of enterprise and self-reliance among women, and supporting the principles of political freedom, economic liberty, and personal responsibility. At IWF, Lukas advances a liberty-oriented approach to women's rights. Prior to IWF, Lukas was senior domestic policy analyst for the House Republican Policy Committee and professional staff for the House Select Committee on Homeland Security. In addition, Lukas worked at the Cato Institute as an entitlements policy analyst and has published her original research widely, including national newspapers such as the Washington Post and USA Today. Lukas earned a B.A. from Princeton University and received a masters degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Stephen Moore
Editorial Writer, Wall Street Journal

Stephen Moore is an editorial page writer for the Wall Street Journal. Prior to joining the paper, Moore founded the Free Enterprise Fund and co-founded the Club for Growth. Moore is a contributing editor to National Review and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He has authored several books including, Government: America's #1 Growth Industry, Still an Open Door? U.S. Immigration Policy, and The American Economy. Prior to founding the Free Enterprise Fund, Moore served as president of the Club for Growth. He was the Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Budgetary Affairs at the Heritage Foundation and senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee under Chairman Dick Armey of Texas. Currently, Moore's work has frequently appeared in major publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Human Events, and Reader's Digest. Moore has appeared on numerous television shows, including CNN's Inside Politics, Crossfire and Moneyline, NBC's Nightly News, Fox Morning News, and the McLaughlin Group.

Robert G. Natelson
Professor of Law, University of Montana

Rob Natelson teaches constitutional law and constitutional history, and is the author of three books and numerous scholarly and popular articles. He has a national reputation for his knowledge of the American founding and his reconstruction of the constitution's original meaning. Natelson also has been active in Montana state politics. He was a leading candidate for governor in 2000 and has been a central figure in the grassroots movement for lower taxes, privatization, and more effective public service delivery.

Michael J. New
Professor, University of Alabama

Michael J. New is an assistant professor at the University of Alabama. Prior to joining the University of Alabama, New held the title of Post Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard-MIT Data Center. New has been at the forefront of research on tax limitation, campaign finance reform, and welfare reform. His writings have appeared in a number of publications including Investor's Business Daily, National Review Online, and the New York Post. Currently, New serves as a board member of the Stanford Review and as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University.

Email: Michael J. New

Jeffrey Parker
Professor of Law, George Mason University

Jeffrey Parker is a law professor at George Mason University and serves as coordinator of the school's litigation law track. His academic focus is on criminal law and sentencing, civil and criminal procedure, evidence, litigation theory and practice, and law and economics. Prior to joining the George Mason law faculty in 1990, Professor Parker was a practicing lawyer specializing in litigation at Sullivan & Cromwell and Sacks Montgomery in New York City. He also served in the federal government as deputy chief counsel and consulting counsel to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Today, Parker is still active in litigation involving public policy issues, most recently in cases on habeas corpus for federal prisoners held in violation of their constitutional rights, the medical use of narcotics to treat chronic intractable pain, and police immunity from liability for unjustified killings of citizens.

Steve Pejovich
Professor Emeritus, Texas A&M University

Steve Pejovich is a professor emeritus at Texas A&M University. Pejovich has written numerous books and articles on economics, including Fundamentals of Economics: A Property Rights Approach and Life in the Soviet Union: A Report Card on Socialism. Dr. Pejovich received an LL.B., from the University of Belgrade and a Ph.D. in economics from Georgetown University. He currently serves as an adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foundation and as a senior research fellow at the International Centre for Economic Research in Torino, Italy.

George Reisman
Professor Emeritus of Economics, Pepperdine University

George Reisman is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Pepperdine University and author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996). Reisman earned his Ph.D. from New York University under the direction of Ludwig von Mises, whose graduate seminar he attended for eight years, starting with his senior year in high school. In Capitalism, he presents, along with original contributions of his own, a synthesis of essential elements of the British Classical and Austrian Schools of Economics and important aspects of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. The synthesis seeks primarily to unite the doctrines of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill with those of Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, and Ludwig von Mises for the purpose providing a state-of-the-art understanding of the nature and value of capitalism.

Reisman is married to Edith Packer, J.D., Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, with whom he lives in Laguna Hills, California.   His web site is www.capitalism.net. His blog is www.georgereisman.com/blog.

David Schmidtz
Professor of Philosophy and Economics, University of Arizona

David Schmidtz is a professor of philosophy and joint professor of economics at the University of Arizona. He serves on the faculty of the University of Arizona’s Freedom Center. Prior to the University of Arizona, Schmidtz taught at Yale University and Bowling Green State University. Specializing in moral and social philosophy, Schmidtz has authored numerous works, including Rational Choice and Moral Agency, as well as multiple articles that have appeared in scholarly journals such as Political Theory and Social Philosophy and Policy. In addition, Schmidtz is currently working on two forthcoming books, The Elements of Justice and The Purpose of Moral Theory. Schmidtz has lectured at over 50 universities in 13 countries, and on 6 continents.

Bradley Smith
Professor of Law, Capital University

One of the nation's leading authorities on Election Law and Campaign Finance, Bradley Smith is Professor of Law at Capital University, where he returned after five years in Washington, D.C., serving as Commissioner, Vice Chairman, and Chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Prior to his nomination, Smith had become a fixture in the national discussion on campaign finance, and was called "the most sought after witness" when Congress considered campaign finance issues. His writings have appeared in such academic journals as the Yale Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, and Pennsylvania Law Review, and in popular publications such as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Review. In 2001, Princeton University Press published his book, "Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform," which was praised by syndicated columnist George Will as "the year's most important book on governance." Named FEC Chairman in January 2004, Professor Smith oversaw implementation of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, and successfully fought to increase due process protections for defendants in FEC enforcement actions. Professor Smith has spoken at over 30 of the nation's law schools, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, Chicago, Michigan, and NYU. His many media credits include national appearances on ABC, NBC, PBS, Fox, CNBC, MSNBC, C-Span, and Bloomberg Media, including such programs as Hardball with Chris Matthews, and the O'Reilly Factor. Professor Smith is of counsel to the Columbus, Ohio and Washington, D.C law firm of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease. Prior to joining Capital's faculty in 1993, he served as United States Vice Consul in Ecuador.

Vernon L. Smith
Professor of Economics and Law, Chapman University School of Law

Vernon L. Smith, Nobel Prize winner in Economics, 2002, is currently professor of economics and law at Chapman University School of Law, a research scholar in the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, and a fellow of the Mercatus Center. He received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cal Tech, and his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. He has authored or co-authored over 200 articles and books on capital theory, finance, natural resource economics and experimental economics. He serves or has served on the board of editors of the American Economic Review, the Cato Journal, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Science, Economic Theory, Economic Design, Games and Economic Behavior, and the Journal of Economic Methodology. The Cambridge University Press published his Papers in Experimental Economics in 1991, and they published a second collection of more recent papers, Bargaining and Market Behavior, in 2000. He received an honorary Doctor of Management degree from Purdue University, and is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Gordon Tullock
Professor Emeritus of Law and Economics, George Mason University (retired)

A father of public choice theory, Gordon Tullock began his distinguished career in 1947 after receiving his doctorate in law from the University of Chicago. Before teaching at universities in South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Arizona, Tullock worked in law and government. In 1966, he began the Public Choice Journal and in 1968 he co-founded the Center for Study of Public Choice at Virginia Tech with Nobel Prize-winner James Buchanan. As the author of 23 books and hundreds of articles, Tullock is most well known for his book, The Calculus of Consent, which he co-authored with James Buchanan. Tullock has served as president of the Public Choice Society, the European Public Choice Society, the Southern Economic Association and the Western Economic Association. In 1998, he was honored with the title of Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association. Tullock retired as a professor emeritus in the department of economics and School of Law at George Mason University.

Todd J. Zywicki
Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law

Todd J. Zywicki is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law and Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review.  From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission.  And in 2006, he served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on "Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System."  Professor Zywicki is currently a Senior Scholar of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Bill of Rights Institute.  He is the author of more than 60 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals.  Professor Zywicki has testified before Congress on multiple occasions and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.  He is a contributor to the popular legal weblog The Volokh Conspiracy.