Cato Institute

Mr. David Boaz is executive vice-president of the Cato Institute in Washington, DC. He previously served as editor of New Guard magazine and executive director of the Council for a Competitive Economy. An expert on such issues as the failure of big government, the politics of the baby-boom generation, drug prohibition, and educational choice, Mr. Boaz writes widely on those subjects and others in such publications as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune. He is the editor of Left, Right, and Babyboom:America's New Politics; Assessing the Reagan Years; The Crisis in Drug Prohibition; and Liberating Schools: Education in the Inner City; and co-editor with Edward H. Crane of An American Vision: Policies for the '90s, Market Liberalism: A Paradigm for the 21st Century, and The Cato Handbook for Congress. Mr. Boaz's latest two books are Libertarianism: A Primer and The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-Tzu to Milton Friedman.

Brink Lindsey is the vice president for research at the Cato Institute. From 1998 to 2004, he was director of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies, helping to make it a leading voice for free trade. An attorney with extensive experience in international trade regulation, Lindsey was formerly director of regulatory studies at Cato and senior editor of Regulation magazine. He is the author of Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism, and is currently working on a new book, The Realm of Freedom: The Rise of Mass Affluence and How It Transformed American Culture, Politics, and Religion. Lindsey's writings have been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New Republic, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and Journal of World Trade. He is a contributing editor at Reason magazine. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, BBC, NPR, and PBS. Lindsey holds an A.B. from Princeton University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Ed Crane was national chairman of the Libertarian Party from 1974 to 1977, and ran its presidential campaign in 1976. A founder of the Cato Institute in 1977 , he has served as its president ever since. Quin Hillyer, Associate Editorial Page Editor of the Baltimore Examiner, has this in-depth profile of Crane. In a recent blog post about the current financial crisis, Crane told of a time in early 1995 when, uninvited, Fannie Mae offered Cato a $100,000 grant. Crane angered the would-be donors by rejecting the money because, he said, Fannie was a "government entity." Fannie insisted it was a private corporation, but Crane said that "the implicit federal guarantee" made it a "socialist institution" good enough reason, he thought, to reject the temptation of an awfully large bundle of cash. He clearly feels vindicated now that the government has indeed bailed out Fannie, along with Freddie Mac, which Crane says is just government cleaning up its own mess.

Jim Harper is the Director of Information Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, the Editor of Web-based privacy think-tank Privacilla.org, and the Webmaster of WashingtonWatch.com. A Poli Sci major at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Jim served as Editor-in-Chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly in his final year at Hastings College of the Law. Prior to becoming a policy analyst and advocate, Jim served as counsel to committees in both the U.S. House and Senate. But he believes that his greatest insights come from watching "Blind Date" all the time.

In an excellent op-ed in the New York Post, Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, shows how the former president should be thankful his massive health reform proposal of 1993 never passed.

Sigrid Fry-Revere is the Cato Institute's director of bioethics studies. She focuses on legal and policy issues in the life sciences with a particular emphasis on the social impact of new medical developments. Her areas of interest include genetic engineering, neuroethics, reproductive technologies, end-of-life decisions, and research ethics. She also deals with issues such as informed consent, cultural diversity, and family prerogatives in health care.

Charles Baird is a professor of economics and the founding director of the Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies at California State University at Hayward. He serves on the founding Steering Committee of Working Families for Wal-Mart and contributes regularly to The Freeman, the magazine of the free-market and libertarian think-tank, the Foundation for Economic Education. He is a director of the Mont Pelerin Society, an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Free Market Foundation in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Howard S. Rich serves as Chairman of Americans for Limited Government. He has been a leading force in the limited government movement since 1992, when he founded U.S. Term Limits. Fifteen states now have term limits on their legislatures, and the term limits movement is one of the largest grassroots movements in American history. An entrepreneur in real estate and business since 1965, Rich serves on the boards of various nonprofit organizations, including the Cato Institute, the Club for Growth and the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation. Rich, a strong supporter of school choice, has been honored with the Herman W. Lay Memorial Award for his work in the educational arena. In 2000 he founded Legislative Education Action Drive (LEAD), which focuses on enacting school choice legislation across the country. He also serves as Chairman of Parents in Charge Foundation. In addition, Rich heads the Club for Growth State Action, which establishes and supports state affiliates of the Club for Growth across the nation, and the Fund for Democracy, which provides seed money to state initiative campaigns. He and his wife Andrea reside in New York City and have two grown sons.

Mr. Jordan earned a doctorate in economics from UCLA and holds honorary doctorates from Denison and Capital universities. Before joining the Bank, he was a senior vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. His commercial banking experience includes five years at Pittsburgh National Bank and seven years at First Interstate Bancorp in Los Angeles. He was a member of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors in 1981-82. Mr. Jordan is also an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and a past president of the National Association of Business Economists.

Randy E. Barnett is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor at Boston University School of Law. He has taught cyberlaw, contracts, constitutional law, criminal law, evidence, agency and partnership, jurisprudence, and torts. Before entering teaching, he was a criminal prosecutor for the Cook County State's Attorney's Office in Chicago where he tried many felony cases. A graduate of Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he has previously visited at Harvard, Northwestern, and the Universidad Francisco Maraquin School of Law in Guatemala. He delivered the Kobe 2000 Lectures on Legal Philosophy at the University of Tokyo and Doshisha University in Kyoto, a series that previously featured Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz and Will Kimlicka. He has also lectured on contract law theory at Waseda University (Tokyo) and on criminal justice theory at Kansai University (Osaka). Barnett was one of the lead attorneys for the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative in its pending case with the federal government and for the plaintiffs in the medical cannabis case of Raich v. Ashcroft. He also coauthored an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the case of Lawrence v. Texas. He is a senior fellow of the Cato Institute. Professor Barnett's book, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law, received the Ralph Gregory Elliot Book Award in 1998. His other works include Contracts Cases and Doctrine, Perspectives on Contract Law, a two-volume anthology on The Rights Retained by the People: The History and Meaning of the Ninth Amendment and Assessing the Criminal: Restitution, Retribution and the Legal Process, published while a law student. His latest book is Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty. Randy Barnett has appeared on such national outlets as The News Hour With Jim Lehrer (PBS), The CBS Evening News, The Ricki Lake Show, Hannity and Colmes (FOX), FOX in Depth, Talk of the Nation (NPR), Discovery Channel, and numerous local television and radio programs such as Greater Boston (WGBH-TV), NewsNight (NECN-TV), Chronicles (WCVB-TV), Chicago Tonight (WTTW-TV), Adler On-Line (WABU-TV), David Brudnoy (WBZ-AM) and Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg (WGN-AM). Before moving to Boston University, he was the Legal Affairs Contributor for WBEZ (NPR) in Chicago where he broadcast a 15-hour series on the Bill of Rights.

Steven Milloy is a biostatistician, lawyer, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and publisher of JunkScience.com where the motto is: "All the junk that's fit to debunk". Milloy holds a B.A. in Natural Sciences from the Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Health Sciences in Biostatistics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, a Juris Doctorate from the University of Baltimore, and a Master of Laws from the Georgetown University Law Center. Steven Milloy wrote much talked-about book, Junk Science Judo: Self-Defense Against Health Scares & Scams

Timothy B. Lee is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He contributes regularly to a variety of online publications, including Ars Technica, Techdirt, Cato @ Liberty, and The Angry Blog. He holds a computer science degree from the University of Minnesota, where he worked for four years as a systems administrator and web programmer. He has been a Mac bigot since 1984, a Unix, vi, and Perl bigot since 1998, and a sworn enemy of HTML-formatted email for as long as certain companies have thought that was a good idea. You can reach him by email at leex1008@umn.edu.

Timothy J. Penny is senior counselor to the Minnesota-based public relations firm Himle-Horner and coauthor of Common Cents. As a member of Congress from 1982 to 1994, Penny established himself as a budget watchdog and received awards for his deficit reduction efforts. Currently, Penny is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, serves on the board of directors of the Concord Coalition, chairs the Minnesota chapter of the Democratic Leadership Council, and is actively involved with the University of Minnesota Humphrey School. He is a graduate of Winona State University.

Wayne Crews is Vice President for Policy and Director of Technology Studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His work includes regulatory reform, antitrust and competition policy, safety and environmental issues, and various information-age concerns such as privacy, "spam," broadband, and intellectual property. He is the author of the yearly report, Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State, and co-authored the recent report "Communications without Commissions: A National Plan for Reforming Telecom Regulation." Crews is co-editor of the books Who Rules the Net: Internet Governance and Jurisdiction (2003) and Copy Fights: The Future of Intellectual Property In the Information Age (2002). He is co-author of What's Yours Is Mine: Open Access and the Rise of Infrastructure Socialism (2003), and a contributing author to others. Crews is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. Crews has published in outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, Communications Lawyer, and the Electricity Journal. He has made various TV appearances on Fox, CNN, ABC, CNBC and others, and his regulatory reform ideas have been featured prominently in such publications as the Washington Post, Forbes and Investor's Business Daily. He is frequently invited to speak, and has testified before

William A. Niskanen has been chairman of the Cato Institute since 1985, following service as a member and acting chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. Niskanen has served as director of economics at the Ford Motor Company, professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, assistant director of the federal Office of Management and Budget, a defense analyst at the Rand Corporation, the director of special studies in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the director of the Program Analysis division at the Institute of Defense Analysis. He has written on many public policy issues including corporate governance, defense, federal budget policy, regulation, Social Security, taxes, and trade. Niskanen's 1971 book Bureaucracy and Representative Government is considered a classic. His most recent book is After Enron: the Lessons for Public Policy. Niskanen holds a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago recently honored him with a lifetime professional service award.

Frederick W. Smith is chairman, president and chief executive officer of FedEx Corporation, a global transportation, business services and logistics company. Smith is responsible for providing strategic direction for all FedEx Corporation operating companies, including FedEx Services, FedEx Express, FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight. Since founding FedEx in 1971, Smith has been an active proponent of regulatory reform, free trade and "open skies agreements" for aviation around the world. FedEx has continued to strengthen its industry leadership over the past 35 years, and has been widely acknowledged for its commitment to total quality service. FedEx Express was the first service company to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1990. FedEx has consistently been ranked on FORTUNE magazine’s industry lists, including “World’s Most Admired Companies,” “America’s Most Admired Companies,” “100 Best Companies to Work For” and is on FORTUNE’s “Blue Ribbon Companies List." Smith has served on the boards of several large public companies and the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and Mayo Foundation Boards. He was formerly chairman of the Board of Governors for the International Air Transport Association and the U.S. Air Transport Association. Smith is a member of the Business Roundtable, the CATO Institute and is co-chairman of the Energy Security Leadership Council. He served as chairman of the U.S.-China Business Council and is the current chairman of the French-American Business Council. In addition, Smith received the Circle of Honor Award from the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation and was named 2006 Person of the Year by the French-American Chamber of Commerce. He is a member of the Aviation Hall of Fame, served as co-chairman of the U.S. World War II Memorial Project, and was named CHIEF EXECUTIVE magazine’s 2004 “CEO of the Year.” Born in 1944 in Marks, Miss., Smith attended Yale University, where he earned a B.A. in 1966. Smith served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1966-1970.

George W. Schiele is president of George Warren Schiele, Inc., president and CEO of 4003 Corporation, and a director of Connecticut Innovations, Inc., where he serves as chairman of the Investment Advisory Committee. George has been a Yankee Institute board member since 2001, and was appointed to the executive board in 2005. He is also a member of the Cato Institute, and Rainier and Penn Clubs. An accomplished author, with bylines in over 30 newspapers and trade publications, including the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, Los Angeles Times, and Forum, in 2003 George had an article published in Investor's Business Daily that analyzed the growth of public employment in Connecticut and the state's growing debt. George resides in Greenwich with his wife Joan. They have three children and three grandchildren. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, College of Liberal Arts and Wharton School, Bachelor of Science in Economics (Finance).

Michael G. Serafino is an associate with Schenck, Price, Smith & King, and a member of the firm's Litigation Department. His areas of practice include complex corporate and commercial litigation, construction litigation, insurance coverage litigation, professional malpractice defense, and ERISA disability claims -- short and long term. Mr. Serafino is a member of the firm's Construction Law Practice Group, Commercial Litigation Practice Group and Insurance Coverage Practice Group, and serves as the Associate Chair of the firm's Recruiting Committee. Mr. Serafino joined the firm in 2003 after serving a year-long judicial clerkship with the Honorable Anthony J. Parrillo of the Superior Court, Appellate Division. He is admitted to practice law in New Jersey, the District of Columbia, and the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Mr. Serafino earned his law degree from George Mason University School of Law in 2002. While attending law school, Mr. Serafino interned at the White House for President George W. Bush in the Domestic Policy Council of the Executive Office of the President, providing legal and policy analysis of various constitutional issues, including Campaign Finance Reform, Gun Control, and the Death Penalty. Mr. Serafino earned his undergraduate degree from Boston College in 1999, where he co-founded one of the largest volunteer organizations on campus - the Campus School Volunteers - which aids severe special needs children, and received the Public Service Award for his outstanding commitment to the Boston College Community. Mr. Serafino is also a member of the Federalist Society, Golden Key National Honor Society, the Order Sons of Italy in America, and the Nutley Chapter of UNICO National.

Peter Ackerman is the managing director of Crown Capital Group Incorporated, a private investment firm. From 1978 to 1990 he was the director of international capital markets at Drexel Burnham Lambert where he structured, financed, and invested in hundreds of recapitalizations including the largest and most complex leveraged acquisitions of that period. During the 1990s Crown has made numerous successful direct investments in fields as diverse as publishing, propane distribution, ball bearings, textiles, custom labeling, wax refining, auto part remanufacturing, variable life insurance, and internet-based food retailing. Dr. Ackerman holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he is the chairman of the board of overseers. In addition, he sits on the boards of Care, Colgate University, and the Cato Institute, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the executive council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Dr. Ackerman is also the co-author of Strategic Nonviolent Conflict and A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict. The latter volume was a companion book for the documentary of the same title, which appeared on PBS in September 2000, and of which Dr. Ackerman was the series editor. It was recently nominated for an Emmy Award by The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Most recently, Dr. Ackerman has co-produced a documentary for PBS on the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, which won a Peabody Award.