Background[]
The intellectual battle for the free society is on. Liberty Classroom's ambitious goal is to equip as many ambassadors of liberty as possible with the knowledge they need to win that battle. We take a machete to the comic-book version of U.S. and European history most of us learned in school. We don't believe the version of events that credits government with all the good things of civilization, that insists we'd be lost without the political class, and that warns us of the wickedness and exploitation to be found in the voluntary sector of society. We believe in freedom. And that's what we teach at Liberty Classroom. We're starting with history, but watch for other subjects to come. Win more debates. Spread the message more effectively. Understand the world better. Learn from — and interact with — some of the most respected and accomplished scholars in the liberty movement.
Insights[]
Instructors[]
Thomas E. Woods, Jr., founder of Liberty Classroom, holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and his master’s, M.Phil., and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. He is the author of eleven books, most recently Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse. His other books include the New York Times bestsellers Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, as well as Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush (with Kevin R.C. Gutzman), Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, and 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask. Woods’ books have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Polish, French, German, Czech, Portuguese, Croatian, Slovak, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
Woods edited and wrote the introduction to five additional books: Back on the Road to Serfdom: The Resurgence of Statism, We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now (with Murray Polner), Murray N. Rothbard’s The Betrayal of the American Right, The Political Writings of Rufus Choate, and Orestes Brownson’s 1875 classic The American Republic. He contributed the preface to Choosing the Right College and the foreword both to Ludwig von Mises’ Liberalism and to Abel Upshur’s A Brief Enquiry into the True Nature and Character of Our Federal Government. He is also the author of Beyond Distributism, part of the Acton Institute’s Christian Social Thought Series.
Woods’ writing has appeared in dozens of popular and scholarly periodicals, including the American Historical Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Investor’s Business Daily, Catholic Historical Review, Modern Age, American Studies, Intercollegiate Review, Catholic Social Science Review, Economic Affairs (U.K.), Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Inside the Vatican, Human Events, University Bookman, Journal of Markets & Morality, New Oxford Review, Catholic World Report, Independent Review, Religion & Liberty, Journal of Libertarian Studies, Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, AD2000 (Australia), Christian Order (U.K.), and Human Rights Review.
Woods won the $50,000 first prize in the prestigious Templeton Enterprise Awards for 2006, given by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the Templeton Foundation, for his book The Church and the Market. He was the recipient of the 2004 O.P. Alford III Prize for Libertarian Scholarship and of an Olive W. Garvey Fellowship from the Independent Institute in 2003. He has also been awarded two Humane Studies Fellowships and a Claude R. Lambe Fellowship from the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University and a Richard M. Weaver Fellowship from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
Woods is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and a contributing editor of The American Conservative magazine. He has been a contributor to six encyclopedias and served as co-editor of Exploring American History: From Colonial Times to 1877, an eleven-volume encyclopedia.
Woods has appeared on CNBC, MSNBC, FOX News Channel, FOX Business Network, C-SPAN, and Bloomberg Television, among other outlets, and has been a guest on hundreds of radio programs, including National Public Radio, the Dennis Miller Show, the Michael Reagan Show, the Dennis Prager Show, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, and the Michael Medved Show. He is a regular fill-in host on The Peter Schiff Show.
Woods lives in Topeka, Kansas, with his wife and four daughters. His website is TomWoods.com.
Kevin Gutzman[]
Kevin R. C. Gutzman is a professor of history at Western Connecticut State University and the author, most recently, of James Madison and the Making of America (St. Martin’s, 2012). His other books are the New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution, Virginia’s American Revolution: From Dominion to Republic, 1776-1840 and (with Thomas Woods) Who Killed the Constitution? The Federal Government vs. American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama.
Gutzman has edited new editions of John Taylor of Caroline’s Tyranny Unmasked and New Views of the Constitution of the United States, and his essay “Lincoln as Jeffersonian: The Colonization Chimera” appeared in editor Brian Dirck’s collection Lincoln Emancipated: The President and the Politics of Race.
His writing has appeared in The Journal of American History, The Journal of Southern History, The Journal of the Early Republic , The Review of Politics, The American Conservative, National Review, Modern Age, Human Events, The University Bookman, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, WorldNetDaily, Military History, The Charleston Post and Courier, The Journal of the Historical Society, LewRockwell.com, TakiMag.com, and many other publications. He has also contributed to 21 historical encyclopedias.
Gutzman has appeared on well over 100 radio programs, including syndicated shows such as the Michael Medved Show, the Janet Parshall Show, the Curtis Sliwa Show, and multiple programs on Air America, on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Mike Church Show (including as guest host), as well as on C-SPAN 2’s Book TV, CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, and Fox News’s The Glenn Beck Program. He has also been interviewed by reporters from the AP, the Washington Times, the Philadelphia Enquirer, the Washington Post, The Hartford Business Journal, the Houston Chronicle online, and the New York Times.
Gutzman has served as technical advisor to two documentary CDs and one feature film project. In addition, he was a featured expert in the documentary film “John Marshall: Citizen, Statesman, Jurist.”
Gutzman holds a B.A. in history from the University of Texas and a master’s and Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia; he also holds a master of public affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs of the University of Texas and a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. His website is KevinGutzman.com.
Brion McClanahan[]
Brion McClanahan holds a Ph.D in American history from the University of South Carolina, where he was Clyde N. Wilson’s last doctoral student. He is the author or co-author of three books: The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, 2009), The Founding Fathers’ Guide to the Constitution (Regnery History, 2012), and Forgotten Conservatives in American History (with Clyde Wilson, Pelican, 2012). He lives with his wife and children in Phenix City, Alabama.
Jason Jewell[]
is the chairman of the Department of Humanities at Faulkner University, where he is an associate professor. He holds a Ph.D. in Humanities from Florida State University, an M.A. in History from Pepperdine University, and a B.A. in History and Music from Harding University. At Faulkner, he teaches courses in several disciplines, including a survey sequence in the Western cultural heritage and the upper-division course sequence in European history. Jewell is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Faith and the Academy and has served as the director of Faulkner’s Institute of Faith and the Academy. Since 2005 he has been an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. His writing has appeared in numerous conservative and libertarian publications.
Jewell blogs at The Western Tradition, where he began a seven-year project to read through the Great Books of the Western World in January 2011. He lives in Montgomery, Alabama, with his wife and five homeschooled children.
Jeffrey M. Herbener[]
Jeffrey Herbener is chairman of the department of economics at Grove City College, associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, and editor of The Meaning of Ludwig von Mises and The Pure Time Preference Theory of Interest.
Guest lecturer Hunt Tooley is Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. He specializes in Modern European History and is the author of The Western Front: Battleground and Home Front in the First World War and National Identity and Weimar Germany.
Guest lecturer Jonathan Bean is a professor of history at Southern Illinois University and a research fellow of the Independent Institute. He is the author of Beyond the Broker State: Federal Policies Toward Small Business, 1936-1961 and Big Government and Affirmative Action: The Scandalous History of the Small Business Administration, and editor of Race and History in America: The Essential Reader.
Our Faculty
Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is the New York Times bestselling author of 11 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, Meltdown, and 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask. He holds a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard and his master's and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Kevin R.C. Gutzman is the New York Times bestselling author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution, Who Killed the Constitution? (with Thomas Woods), Virginia's American Revolution, and James Madison and the Making of America.
Brion McClanahan is the author of The Founding Fathers' Guide to the Constitution and The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers.
Jason Jewell is the chairman of the department of humanities at Faulkner University. Learn More »
Jeffrey Herbener[]
Jeffrey M. Herbener is chairman of the department of economics at Grove City College, associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, and editor of The Meaning of Ludwig von Mises.