Doug Duncan

A Conversation About the U.S. Economy and the Future with Implications for North Dakota

Douglas G. Duncan is an Executive Advisor, Senior Vice President at Fannie Mae. He was previously Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at Fannie Mae, where he was responsible for forecasts and analyses of the economy and the housing and mortgage markets. Duncan also oversaw strategic research regarding the potential impact of external factors on the housing industry.

Under his leadership, Fannie Mae's Economic & Strategic Research (ESR) Group earned the 2022 Lawrence R. Klein Award for Blue Chip Forecast Accuracy, recognizing their industry-leading work over a four-year period. In both 2015 and 2016, Duncan and the ESR Group won the NABE Outlook Award, presented annually for the most accurate GDP and Treasury note yield forecasts, becoming the first recipient in the award's history to capture the honor two years in a row.

Named one of Bloomberg/BusinessWeek's 50 Most Powerful People in Real Estate and Inman News' 100 Most Influential People in Real Estate, as Chief Economist, Duncan was Fannie Mae's source for information and analyses on demographics and the external business and economic environment; the implications of changes in economic activity on the company's strategy and execution; and for forecasting overall housing, economic, and mortgage market activity.

Prior to joining Fannie Mae, Duncan was Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association. His experience also includes work on the Financial Institutions Project at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and service as a LEGIS Fellow and staff member with the Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs for Congressman Bill McCollum in the U.S. House of Representatives. Previously, Duncan was a Board member of the National Association of Business Economics and a Board member and Chairman of Strategies to Elevate People (STEP).

Duncan is a Hoyt Professional Fellow at the Homer Hoyt Institute. He was chosen as the North Dakota State University College of Agriculture Alumni of the Year in 2018. He was also elected as a Trustee of North Dakota State University in 2022.

Duncan received his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Texas A&M University and his B.S. and M.S. in Agricultural Economics from North Dakota State University.

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Greg Lukianoff

Free Speech in Free Fall: The Academic Freedom Crisis on Campus

Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, New York Times best-selling author, and the President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). He is the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, Freedom From Speech, and FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus. He co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure with Jonathan Haidt. Most recently Greg co-authored The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Solution with Rikki Schlott. Greg is also an Executive Producer of Can We Take a Joke? (2015), a feature-length documentary that explores the collision between comedy, censorship, and outrage culture, both on and off campus, and of Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story (2020), an award-winning feature-length film about the life and career of former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser.

Greg has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and numerous other publications. He frequently appears on TV shows and radio programs, including the CBS Evening News, The Today Show, and NPR’s Morning Edition. In 2008, he became the first-ever recipient of the Playboy Foundation’s Freedom of Expression Award, and he has testified before both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives about free speech issues on America’s college campuses.

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Douglas Irwin

A New Era of Economic Disintegration?

Douglas Irwin is John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy (University of Chicago Press, 2017), which The Economist and Foreign Affairs selected as one of their Best Books of the Year. He is president-elect of the Economic History Association (2022-23). 

He is the author of Free Trade Under Fire (Princeton University Press, fifth edition 2020), Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s (MIT Press, 2012), Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression (Princeton University Press, 2011), The Genesis of the GATT (Cambridge University Press, 2008, co-authored with Petros Mavroidis and Alan Sykes), Against the Tide:  An Intellectual History of Free Trade (Princeton University Press, 1996), and many articles on trade policy and economic history in books and professional journals.

He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He worked on trade policy issues while on the staff of President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers and later worked in the International Finance Division at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C. Before joining Dartmouth, Irwin taught at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.

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Tami Reller

A Conversation on Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Lessons Learned in Business with Tami Reller

Tami Reller is an experienced business professional who began her career at Great Plains Software in Fargo. She went on to become Executive Vice President of Marketing at Microsoft, CFO of Microsoft Windows, and then CEO of Duly Health and Care. Most recently she served as Chair of the Best of America PAC supporting the Burgum presidential campaign. Reller earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics from Minnesota State University Moorhead and a master's degree in business administration from Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California. 

Reller will discuss her career experiences as a woman entrepreneur and executive, and the lessons she's learned about markets, technology, and more. 

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Ian Rowe

A Conversation on Agency, Education, and Upward Mobility with Ian Rowe

Ian Rowe is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on education and upward mobility, family formation, and adoption. Mr. Rowe is also the cofounder of Vertex Partnership Academies, a new network of character-based International Baccalaureate high schools opening in the Bronx in 2022; the chairman of the board of Spence-Chapin, a nonprofit adoption services organization; and the cofounder of the National Summer School Initiative. He concurrently serves as a senior visiting fellow at the Woodson Center and a writer for the 1776 Unites Campaign.

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Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell

Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World, Author Visit

Robert Lawson is a Clinical Professor and holds the Jerome M. Fullinwider Centennial Chair in Economic Freedom; he also is director of the Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom at the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Cox School of Business. He earned his Ph.D. and MS in Economics from Florida State University and his BS in Economics from the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University. He previously taught at Auburn University, Capital University, and Shawnee State University. Dr. Lawson is a founding co-author of the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of the World annual report, which presents an economic freedom index for over 160 countries. Lawson has authored or co-authored over 100 journal articles, book chapters, policy reports, and book reviews. With Benjamin Powell, he is co-author of the Amazon Bestseller, Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World (Regnery Publishing).

Benjamin Powell is the executive director of the Free Market Institute and a professor of economics in the Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration at Texas Tech University. He is a Senior Fellow with the Independent Institute, Secretary-Treasurer of the Southern Economic Association, Secretary-Treasurer of The Association of Private Enterprise Education, and Treasurer of The Mont Pelerin Society. He earned his B.S. in economics and finance from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University.

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David Bobb

Constitution Day Event Speaker

David Bobb joined the Bill of Rights Institute (BRI) as president in 2013. A nationally recognized leader in civic education, David has worked for 25 years to build strong civic learning programs that engage the hearts and minds of young people. BRI is the nation’s leading providers of free, open education resources and professional development programs for secondary school teachers of American civics and history. Previously David worked for twelve years at Hillsdale College, where as founding director of the Washington, D.C.-based Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies, and Citizenship he created educational resources and programs accessed by millions of Americans. Author of Humility: An Unlikely Biography of America’s Greatest Virtue (HarperCollins, 2013), and a chapter on Frederick Douglass in a recent volume (Oxford University Press, 2019), David has written for publications including the Wall Street Journal and Fast Company, and is currently writing a book on the future of civics. He earned a Ph.D. in political science from Boston College.

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Vernon Smith

Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, Vernon Smith, discusses Adam Smith's Theory of Society: In celebration of the 300th anniversary year of his birth. Adam Smith wrote perceptively and deeply on the roots of stable society in the rules of Beneficence and Justice we learn to follow. That learning, Smith argues, begins in earnest when we first have play fellows, who let us know when we do nice things for them, or not-nice things to them. Thus, do we enter The Great School of Self-Command, and none of us can scarce live long enough not to continue to learn fair-play rules from each other.  The rules of justice define property in our bodies by limiting murder; property in the products of our mind and body by limiting theft and robbery; property in each other’s promises by limiting violation of contract. These bottom-up principles were captured by the English, Scotch, and Irish emigrants who migrated to the West, some of whom wrote the National Constitutions we live by. Smith's presentation is followed by a moderated Q&A with the audience.

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Gabriela Santos

Keynote for Financial Markets Day

Gabriela D. Santos, Managing Director, is a Global Market Strategist on the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Global Market Insights Strategy Team. In this role, Gabriela is responsible for delivering timely market and economic insights to institutional and retail clients across the U.S. and  Latin America. In addition, Gabriela conducts research on the global economy and capital markets and is responsible for the development of the Guide to the Markets, Guide to China, and Guide to the Markets - Latin America, amongst other publications. Gabriela has played an instrumental role in the development of the team's research on Chinese markets and the expansion of the Market Insights program in Latin America. Gabriela is also a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg, and other financial news outlets and is often quoted in the financial press.

John List

John A. List is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on questions in microeconomics, with a particular emphasis on using field experiments to address both positive and normative issues. For decades his field experimental research has focused on issues related to the inner-workings of markets, the effects of various incentives schemes on market equilibria and allocations, how behavioral economics can augment the standard economic model, on early childhood education and interventions, and most recently on the gender earnings gap in the gig economy (using evidence from rideshare drivers). His research includes over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and several published books. He has received several awards and served on the President’s Council of Economic Advisors in 2022-2003.

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Glenn Loury

Glenn C. Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University.  As an academic economist, Professor Loury has published mainly in the areas of applied microeconomic theory, game theory, industrial organization, natural resource economics, and the economics of race and inequality. As a prominent social critic and public intellectual, writing mainly on the themes of racial inequality and social policy, he has published over 200 essays and reviews in journals of public affairs in the U.S. and abroad.  He has received numerous awards and held several prestigious leadership positions.  He is also the author of four books and host of “The Glenn Show.”

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Sam Peltzman

A Conversation with Sam Peltzman

Dr. Sam Peltzman is the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Chicago. His research has focused on issues related to the interface between the public sector and the private economy, including the economics of regulation, banking, automobile safety, pharmaceutical innovation, the growth of government, the political economy of public education, and the economic analysis of voters and legislators. He served as senior staff economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers during the Nixon administration, and he is currently an editor at the Journal of Law and Economics. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1965. 

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Mark Mills

Technology and the Future: The '20s Will (Yet) Roar

Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University. He is a co-founder and strategic partner in Montrose Lane, a software-centric energy-tech venture fund; previously, he cofounded Digital Power Capital and was chairman and CTO of ICx Technologies. He is a bestselling author, host of the new podcast "The Last Optimist," and a frequent media contributor. Mills served in the White House Science Office during the Reagan administration and worked as an experimental physicist and development engineer at Canada's Bell Labs. 

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Magatte Wade

The Heart of the Cheetah: Entrepreneurship and Prosperity in Africa

Magatte Wade is a serial entrepreneur, inspirational speaker, and visionary business leader with a passion for creating positive change in Africa. She is the founder and CEO of SkinIsSkin.com, "the lip balm with a mission," and she has created successful high-end retail brands inspired by diverse African traditions. She is passionate about the role of free markets in overcoming poverty and the role of enterprise to tackle social issues and entrepreneurial education. She was named a Forbes “20 Youngest Power Women in Africa,” a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum at Davos, a TED Global Africa Fellow, and a "Leading Woman in Wellness” by the Global Wellness Summit. 

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Jason Riley

Upward Mobility and Race in America

Jason Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, where he has published opinion pieces for more than 20 years. Topics include politics, economics, education, immigration, social inequality, and race. He is the author of five books, including the 2021 biography “Maverick,” which chronicles the life of public intellectual Thomas Sowell. His most recent book, “The Black Boom,” is an assessment of the shrinking black-white gaps in joblessness, income, poverty, and other measures prior to the pandemic.

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Liz Ann Sonders

Keynote for Financial Markets Day

As Managing Director and Chief Investment Strategist at Charles Schwab, Liz Ann Sonders has a range of investment strategy responsibilities, from market and economic analysis to investor education, all focused on the individual investor. A keynote speaker at numerous industry conferences, Liz Ann is regularly quoted in financial publications, and she appears as a regular guest on news programs. Liz Ann has been named “Best Market Strategist” by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and one of SmartMoney magazine’s “Power 30.” Barron’s has named her to its “100 Most Influential Women in Finance” list and Investment Advisor has included her on the “IA 25,” its list of the 25 most important people in and around the financial advisory profession.

Vernon L. Smith

A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith

Dr. Vernon L. Smith was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for his groundbreaking work in experimental economics. Dr. Smith has joint appointments with the Argyros School of Business and Economics and the Fowler School of Law at Chapman University. He has authored or co-authored more than 350 articles and books on capital theory, finance, natural resource economics, and experimental economics. Dr. Smith completed his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, his master's degree in economics at the University of Kansas, and his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University.

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Emily Oster

Emily Oster is professor of economics at Brown University and author of three best-selling books on pregnancy and parenting: Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong - and What You Really Need to Know, Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool, and The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years. Her academic work focuses on health economics and statistical methods. In addition, she writes the newsletter ParentData and serves as executive director for the COVID-19 School Data Hub. 

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Alice Marie Johnson

From Prison to Promise

Alice Marie Johnson is a formal federal inmate who brings a passionate and personal perspective to the criminal justice reform movement. Her story received world-wide attention when Kim Kardashian West advocated for her release from a mandatory life sentence without parole. After over 21 years in federal prison for her first and only conviction in a nonviolent drug case, President Donald Trump granted her clemency in 2018 and a full pardon in 2020. She is the founder and CEO of the Taking Action for Good Foundation and author of the best-selling memoir After Life: My Journey from Incarceration to Freedom. 

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Tyler VanderWeele

On the Promotion of Human Flourishing

Tyler VanderWeele is the director of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University's Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University in mathematics, philosophy, theology, finance and applied economics, and biostatistics. His research spans psychiatric and social epidemiology; the science of happiness and flourishing; and the study of religion and health. He has published over 300 papers in peer-reviewed journals and is the author of three books. 

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J.D. Vance

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

J.D. Vance grew up in the Rust Belt city of Middletown, Ohio, and the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky. He enlisted in the Marine Corps after high school and served in Iraq. A graduate of the Ohio State University and Yale Law School, he has contributed to the National Review and is a principal at a leading Silicon Valley investment firm. He is the author of the #1 New York Times best-seller Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Hillbilly Elegy tells the true story of upward mobility and examines the social, regional, and class decline of white working-class Americans.

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Emily Chamlee-Wright

Free Speech on Campuses and Our Road Back to Good Conversations

Emily Chamlee-Wright is the president and CEO of the Institute for Humane Studies, which supports and partners with scholars working within the classical liberal tradition to advance higher education's core purpose of intellectual discovery and human progress. Prior to joining IHS in 2016, Dr. Chamlee-Wright served as provost and dean at Washington College and professor of economics and associate dean at Beloit College. She has six books to her credit and is an expert on the complex and often fraught topic of free speech policy and governance in higher education. She earned her PhD in economics from George Mason University.

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Ambassador Susan Schwab

Trade Talks and Trailblazing: Lessons from a Former U.S. Trade Representative

Ambassador Susan Schwab served as U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) from 2006-2009 and deputy USTR from 2005-2006. Earlier in her career, she served as assistant secretary of commerce and director-general of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service, as a trade staffer and legislative director for Senator John C. Danforth, and as a foreign service officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. She began her career as an agricultural trade negotiator at USTR. In academia, she served as dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. She holds a bachelor's degree from Williams College; a master's degree from Stanford University; and a Ph.D. from The George Washington University.

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Robert Koopman

COVID-19: Implications for the Future of Globalization and Integration

Robert Koopman serves as the Chief Economist and Director of the Economic Research and Statistics Division at the World Trade Organization. Prior to this post, he served as the Director of Operations and Chief Operating Officer for the U.S. International Trade Commission. He is also an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of Geneva and research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

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Arthur Brooks

Arthur C. Brooks is Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and Arthur C. Patterson Faculty Fellow at the Harvard Business School. Before joining the Harvard faculty in July of 2019, he served for ten years as president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a public policy think tank in Washington, DC. Brooks is the author of 11 books, including the national bestsellers “Love Your Enemies” (2019), “The Conservative Heart” (2015), and “The Road to Freedom” (2012). He is a columnist for The Atlantic, host of the podcast The Art of Happiness with Arthur Brooks, and subject of the 2019 documentary film “The Pursuit.”

Watch Clip "Inequality of Dignity"        Watch Clip "Fighting Poverty"

Edward Glaeser

Pandemics and Geography: How Does COVID-19 Change America's Spatial Economy

Edward Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1992. He regularly teaches microeconomics theory, and occasionally urban and public economics. He has served as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and Director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He has published dozens of papers on cities economic growth, law, and economics. In particular, his work has focused on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1992.

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Johan Norberg

Why I am an Optimist. Why this is the Golden Era of Human Development, and Why You Don't Know It. 

Johan Norberg is an author, lecturer and documentary filmmaker, with documentaries on globalization, economic development and free trade. He is the author and editor of several books, including Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future, named a "book of the year" by The Guardian, The Economist and The Observer. He is a native of Sweden, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, and the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels, Belgium. For his work, Norberg has received the Distinguished Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Award from the Atlas Foundation, the Walter Judd Freedom Award, the Julian Simon Memorial Award and the gold medal from the German Hayek Stiftung, that year shared with Margaret Thatcher.

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John Allison

The Philosophical Fight for the Future of America

John Allison is the former chairman and CEO of BB&T Corp., the 10th-largest financial services holding company headquartered in the United States. He is the author of “The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism is the World Economy’s Only Hope” and “The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why the Future of Business Depends on the Return to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” He was president and CEO of the Cato Institute, a public policy think tank dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace, from 2012 to 2015. He is currently an executive-in-residence at the Wake Forest School of Business.