Economics from Smith to Friedman

This conference will introduce high school teachers and administrators to classic authors and key concepts in free market economics. The intention is to go beyond basic matters of supply and demand and efficiency concerns to consider the broader social and institutional ramifications of a free market system. Themes such as the religious roots of capitalism, protectionism, and financial crises will be explored in a mixture of lectures and Socratic discussion.

July 26-29, 2012
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Registration opens March 26, 2012

Freedom and Responsibility in the Thought of Max Weber

This conference will focus on the moral, political, and economic thought of the great German sociologist and political theorist Max Weber. Along with the faculty, graduate students will analyze Weber’s writings on religion and capitalism, bureaucracy and institutions, and the power of politics and science in modernity. Weber characterized western modernity by the increasing rationalization of political institutions and patterns of life. The effect was an impersonal coercion over the lives of individuals by government and the market that threatened the freedom of persons and also robbed democratic life of humane meaning. The growth of bureaucratic control was, Weber contended, rendered even more problematic by the loss of religious faith and the existential strength this had engendered. Weber was skeptical about the possibility that these trends could be reversed, but he sought to understand how freedom and personal dignity might be preserved in an environment of impersonal control and bureaucracy. Moreover, certain authoritarian tendencies present in modern institutions that Weber identified have carried forward to present day. Thus, a careful study of his writings will help provide a foundational understanding of the rationalist processes that inform many modern economic and political institutions.

October 25-28, 2012
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Registration opens June 2012

Religion and Liberty: Acton and Toqueville

At this conference, graduate students will discuss religious freedom, the church-state relationship, and the role of religion in shaping the moral order of free societies. These issues will be examined through the lens of history, and readings and discussion will explore the relationship by illustrating how, at different points in history, Christianity has acted as a support for liberty and, at others, has failed to do so. The conference readings will focus on the writings of Lord Acton and Alexis de Tocqueville, two of the most insightful nineteenth-century liberal thinkers to write about the relationship between Christianity and liberty. The sessions progress chronologically and thematically: from a focus on antiquity and the rise of Christianity; to the central socio–political problems of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (religious freedom and the church-state relationship); to a key event that provoked re-thinking of those problems (the formation of the United States); to the treatment of issues that remain contemporary areas of concern (such as the implications of economic prosperity for religion and liberty).

November 15-18, 2012
Grand Rapids, MI
Registration opens July 2012

Limited Government and the Rule of Law

The purpose of this conference is to explore the philosophical foundations of limited government by engaging ancient, medieval, and modern thinkers on the subject. Participants will focus on the contributions made by these enduring sources of political and social thought to an understanding of the necessity of limited government. A secondary aspect of the conference will be to introduce participants to the criticisms lodged against the regulatory apparatus of the modern state by having them review basic readings on the principle of subsidiarity and public choice economics. Several documents that are basic to the American founding will also be examined for their understanding of limited government.

February 14-17, 2013
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Registration opens December 2012