George Washington Forum News and Events

John Tomasi (Brown University)

John Tomasi is Professor of political science at Brown University, where he is the founder and director of Brown’s Political Theory Project. Having taught at Brown since 1993, he earned his D.Phil. in political philosophy from the University of Oxford and has held visiting positions at Princeton, Stanford, Harvard and Arizona. The author of more than two dozen articles and book chapters, he has also written Liberalism Beyond Justice (Princeton, 2001) and, most recently, Free Market Fairness (Princeton, 2012). He is currently completing a book entitled, A Bleeding-Heart History of Libertarianism.

Johann Neem (Western Washington University)

Johann Neem is Associate Professor of History at Western Washington University. A graduate of Brown University, he did his doctoral work on American history at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts (Harvard, 2008) and has written widely on educational reform.

This conference will consider equality as it relates to public policy. Gerald Gaus (Arizona) will deliver the keynote lecture, while Elizabeth Anderson (Michigan), Deirdre McCloskey (Illinois-Chicago), George Sher (Rice), Scott Winship (Manhattan Institute), Steve Horowitz (St. Lawrence) and Tom W. Bell (Chapman Law School) will deliver plenary addresses.

Alan Meese (College of William & Mary Law School)

Alan Meese is Ball Professor of Law at the College of William and Mary. He did his undergraduate work at William and Mary, where he graduated first in his class, before attending the University of Chicago Law School. After law school, he clerked first for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and then for Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. Before joining the faculty at William and Mary in 1995, he practiced law at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom in Washington, D.C.

Professor Meese has published widely on antitrust, the economics of tort law, the jurisprudence of economic liberties, affirmative action, and whether corporate directors should be concerned about the welfare of non-shareholder constituencies.

Ambassador John R. Bolton (American Enterprise Institute)

Ambassador John R. Bolton is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. After completing his undergraduate and law degrees at Yale, he has spent many years in public service as a diplomat and lawyer. From August 2005 to December 2006, he served as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. From 2001 to 2005, he was under secretary of state for arms control and international security. During the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, Bolton worked in the State Department as an assistant secretary for International Organization Affairs, in the Justice Department as an assistant attorney general and in the U.S. Agency for International Development. Bolton’s lecture is co-sponsored by the Ohio University chapter of the Alexander Hamilton Society.