Senator Rand Paul, M.D. is one of the nation’s leading advocates for liberty. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, Dr. Paul has proven to be an outspoken champion for constitutional liberties and fiscal responsibility. As a fierce advocate against government overreach, Rand has fought tirelessly to return government to its limited, constitutional scope.

A devoted husband and father, Dr. Paul and his family live in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where Rand owned his own ophthalmology practice and performed eye surgery for 18 years. As a hard-working and dedicated physician–not a career politician–Rand Paul came to Washington to shake things up and to make a difference.

Rand is the third of five children born to Carol and Ron Paul. He grew up in Lake Jackson, Texas and attended Baylor University. He graduated from Duke Medical School in 1988. Dr. Paul completed a general surgery internship at Georgia Baptist Medical Center in Atlanta and completed his residency in ophthalmology at Duke University Medical Center. Upon completion of his training in 1993, Rand and Kelley moved to Bowling Green to start their family and begin his ophthalmology practice.

During his free time, Dr. Paul performs pro-bono eye surgeries for patients across Kentucky. Additionally, he provides free eye surgery to children from around the world through his participation in the Children of the Americas Program. Most recently, he traveled to Guatemala on a medical mission trip with the University of Utah’s Moran Eye Center. During the week over 200 patients, many of them blind with cataracts, had their vision restored by Dr. Paul.

Dr. Paul’s work in politics is indicative of his life’s work as a surgeon: a desire to diagnose problems and provide practical solutions, whether it be in Bowling Green, Kentucky or Washington, D.C.

Steve Forbes was born on July 18, 1947, in Morristown, New Jersey. He received a B.A. in history from Princeton in 1970.

Mr. Forbes serves on the boards of The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Heritage Foundation and The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He is on the Board of Overseers of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and on the Board of Visitors for the School of Public Policy of Pepperdine University. He previously served on the Board of Trustees of Princeton University for ten years.

Mr. Forbes writes editorials for Forbes under the heading of “Fact and Comment.” A widely respected economic prognosticator, he is the only writer to have won the highly prestigious Crystal Owl Award four times. The prize was formerly given by U.S. Steel Corporation to the financial journalist whose economic forecasts for the coming year proved most accurate.

Jonathan Haidt (pronounced “height”) is a social psychologist at the NYU-Stern School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, and spent most of his career (1995-2011) at the University of Virginia.

Haidt’s research examines the intuitive foundations of morality, and how morality varies across cultures–including the cultures of American progressive, conservatives, and libertarians. Haidt is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis, and of The New York Times bestseller The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Johan Norberg is an author, lecturer and documentary filmmaker, born in Sweden. He is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. and received his M. A. in the History of Ideas from the University of Stockholm.

He has written books on a broad range of topics, including global economics and popular science. His In Defence of Global Capitalism has been published in more than 25 countries. His most recent book is Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future, described by The Economist as “a blast of good sense”.

He also regularly hosts documentaries on development and economics for American television, most recently India Awakes and The Real Adam Smith. For his work, Johan Norberg has received the Distinguished Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Award from the American Atlas Foundation, and the gold medal from the German Hayek Stiftung.

Grover Norquist (Twitter: @GroverNorquist) is president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a taxpayer advocacy group he founded in 1985 at President Reagan’s request. ATR works to limit the size and cost of government and opposes higher taxes at the federal, state, and local levels and supports tax reform that moves towards taxing consumed income one time at one rate.

ATR organizes the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which asks all candidates for federal and state office to commit themselves in writing to the American people to oppose all net tax increases. In the 115th Congress, 212 House members and 45 Senators have taken the pledge.

Norquist chairs the Washington, DC - based Wednesday Meeting, a weekly gathering of more than 150 elected officials, political activists, and movement leaders. The meeting started in 1993 and takes place in ATR's conference room. There are now 60 similar center-right meetings in 48 states.

Mr. Norquist also:

Serves on the board of directors of the National Rifle Association of America, the American Conservative Union, the Parental Rights Organization and Center for the National Interest (formerly The Nixon Center.)
Serves as a Contributing Editor to the American Spectator Magazine.
Serves as president of the American Society of Competitiveness.
Authored four books: Rock the House; Leave Us Alone – Getting the Government’s Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives; Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future (with co-author John Lott) and End the IRS Before it Ends Us — How to Restore a Low Tax, High Growth, Wealthy America — published April 7, 2015.

Previously, Mr. Norquist served as:

A commissioner on the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce.
A commissioner on the National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service.
Economist and chief speech-writer, U.S. Chamber of Commerce (1983-1984.)
Campaign staff on the 1988, 1992, 1996 Republican Platform Committees.
Executive director of the National Taxpayers’ Union.
Executive director of the College Republicans.

Mr. Norquist holds an MBA and a BA in Economics, both from Harvard University. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Samah, and two daughters.

Described by The Economist as "puckish" (aka playfully mischievous), Amir Ahmad Nasr is the author of the searing memoir and banned manifesto, My Isl@m: How Fundamentalism Stole My Mind – And Doubt Freed My Soul, recommended by Foreign Policy among 25 books to read in 2013. He has shared the stage with Nobel Peace Laureates, former presidents, and fellow entrepreneurs, and has been noted by WIRED as a "formidable speaker." He is the founder of AssertiveU Media Inc., and lives in the land of beavers and maple syrup aka beloved Canada.

Talk description: "Boisterous rhetoric masquerading as free speech is among the biggest threats to free speech today, and it's coming from both sides of the political spectrum Left and Right. A democracy cannot function if discourse degenerates into a shouting match past one another. Rather than vent or ignore, we must genuinely engage."

Join legendary Gonzo artist, Ralph Steadman, in a live Skype direct from his studio in Kent. Ralph will give you a guided tour of his work space, showing little seen pieces along the way, before joining you in conversation and an audience Q&A. He may even put pen to paper for a live demonstration of his inimitable technique!

Topic: Gonzo Art: A Conversation and Workshop Tour with Ralph Steadman

Greg Glassman is the founder and CEO of CrossFit, a strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units, champion martial artists, moms, dads, grandmothers and hundreds of other elite and professional athletes worldwide. The challenging program combines weightlifting, gymnastics, and calisthenics into a daily Workout of the Day, known in CrossFit parlance as a “WOD.” Glassman was an elite level gymnast and athlete all his life. In 1995, he began training officers at the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Department. As Glassman says, “Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense.” In 2001 Glassman started crossfit.comand began affiliating gyms under the CrossFit name. Today there are over 13,000 independently-owned CrossFit affiliates in over 140 countries, and the annual CrossFit Games, which attracted 330,000 participants in 2016 and is televised on ESPN.

Edward Peter Stringham is the Davis Professor of Economic Organizations and Innovation. Stringham is president of the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, former president of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, editor of the Journal of Private Enterprise, editor of two books, and author of more than sixty journal articles, book chapters, and policy studies.

His work has been discussed on more than 100 broadcast stations, including CBS, CNBC, CNN, Fox, Headline News, NPR, and MTV. His book, Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social Life, is published by Oxford University Press.

Mustafa Akyol is a columnist for Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News, the website Al-Monitor: The Pulse of the Middle East, and a monthly opinion writer for The International New York Times. His articles have also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and many other publications. He studied political science and history at the Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, where he still lives. His book, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty, an argument for "Muslim liberalism" was published by W.W. Norton in July 2011, and received praise from the Finanical Times, Wall Street Journal, the Economist and more.

Jeremy McLellan is an internationally known standup comedian based in Charleston, SC where he won the 2015 and 2016 Charleston Standup Comedy Competition and was named Best Local Comic in the Charleston City Paper. In the past year, Jeremy has performed for YALCON 2016, the LP National Convention in Orlando, and recently toured with Gary Johnson’s Our American Initiative in the lead-up to the presidential election. Never one to shy away from controversy, his material covers a wide range of hot-button topics like politics, gender, race, disability, religion, and Santa Claus.

Edward H. Crane is widely regarded as one of the driving forces behind the rapidly growing libertarian movement in the United States. Born in Los Angeles on August 15, 1944, Crane holds a B.S. degree from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.B.A. in finance and investments in 1968 from the University of Southern California Graduate School of Business. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

He worked in Los Angeles as a portfolio manager for the investment firm of Scudder, Stevens & Clark and then as vice president in the San Francisco office of Alliance Capital Management Corp. until 1977. A delegate to the founding convention of the Libertarian Party in Denver, Colorado in 1972, Crane was elected national chairman of the party in 1974, a position he held until 1977, when he co-founded the Cato Institute in San Francisco. He served as president and CEO of Cato from 1977 through 2012, when he became president emeritus.
Today, Ed Crane is president of the Purple PAC, a super PAC devoted to supporting ideas and candidates consistent with dynamic market capitalism (as opposed to crony capitalism), social tolerance, and a skepticism of American attempts to be the world’s policeman. He serves on the boards of the Center for Competitive Politics, Americans for Limited Government, and U.S. Term Limits.

Amity Shlaes is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man: Graphic, a full-length illustrated version of the same book drawn by Paul Rivoche, Coolidge, a full-length biography of the thirtieth president, which debuted at number three on the Times list, and The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americas Crazy. National Review called the Forgotten Man “the finest history of the Great Depression ever written.” The Economist wrote of Coolidge that the book “deserves to be widely read” and made it an editor’s choice for 2013. Miss Shlaes is under contract to write “The Silent Majority,” a third volume on the twentieth century.
Miss Shlaes is a presidential scholar at The King's College.
Miss Shlaes chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, a national foundation based in the birthplace of President Coolidge. The foundation’s goal is to share Coolidge with Americans by hosting debates and events at the Coolidge site and through newer media. She is especially interested in education. Miss Shlaes is a winner of the Hayek Prize and currently chairs the jury for the prize, sponsored by the Manhattan Institute. She has twice been a finalist for the Loeb Prize in commentary. In 2002 she was co-winner of the Frederic Bastiat Prize, an international prize for writing on political economy, and later chaired the jury for that prize. In 2003, she was JP Morgan Fellow for finance and economy at the American Academy in Berlin. She has given two Bradley lectures at AEI. Over the years she has served at the Council on Foreign Relations (as senior fellow in economic history) and the George W. Bush Presidential Center. Many readers know Miss Shlaes from the Wall Street Journal, where she served on the editorial board, writing on foreign policy, taxation, and other topics, or from the Financial Times and Bloomberg, each of which carried her syndicated column over the years. Currently Miss Shlaes appears in print in Forbes. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale College, Miss Shlaes is married to fellow journalist and editor Seth Lipsky. The Lipskys have four children.Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/author/amity-shlaes

Talk description: A spectre is haunting the world: the spectre of radical anti-libertarian movements, each grappling with the others like scorpions in a bottle and all competing to see which can dismantle the institutions of liberty the fastest. Some are ensconced in the universities and other elite centers, and some draw their strength from populist anger. Dr. Palmer will discuss where these anti-libertarian movements came from, how they feed off each other, and how libertarians can fight back.

About: Dr. Tom G. Palmer is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and director of Cato University, the Institute’s educational arm. Palmer is also the executive vice president for international programs at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and is responsible for establishing operating programs in 14 languages and managing programs for a worldwide network of think tanks.

Talk description: The Trump administration raises many concerns for friends of liberty and toleration. However, as commander-in- chief, the 45th president can improve U.S. foreign policy by jettisoning America’s bankrupt pursuit of global hegemony. In fact, this was precisely the message many voters wanted to hear! Realistically, he’d face stiff resistance. Despite the dilemma of “global leadership,” the Beltway’s foreign policy community and the military industrial complex do not take kindly to change. Dan McCarthy, editor-at-large of The American Conservative, will moderate what promises to be a fascinating conversation with the renowned political scientist John Mearsheimer about realism and restraint in the age of Trump.

About: John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and then served five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. The author of five books, he has also written many articles that have appeared in academic journals like International Security, and popular magazines like Foreign Affairs and the London Review of Books. Furthermore he has written a number of op-ed pieces for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times dealing with topics like Bosnia, nuclear proliferation, American policy towards India, the failure of Arab-Israeli peace efforts, the folly of invading Iraq, and the causes of the Ukrainian crisis.

Silence helps no one: Lessons from a beauty queen

Talk description: Miss World Canada. Award-winning actor. Human rights advocate. Anastasia Lin shatters simplistic categories. With characteristic intelligence—and with rare bravery—she commands global attention for her outspoken stand against persecution around the world. Making an emphatic appeal for greater tolerance, Lin reports on what’s really happening in China—invaluable information from an insider’s perspective.

About: Anastasia Lin is an award-winning actress, beauty pageant titleholder, and human rights advocate. In 2015, Lin won the Miss World Canada title, and was to represent Canada at the Miss World pageant in China. However, she was refused a visa and declared a persona non grata by Chinese authorities for her outspoken views on the country’s human rights violations and persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

The news of her rejection—and subsequent attempt to enter China—caused global media attention for weeks, leading to a front page article in The New York Times and op-eds in major newspapers. Since then, “media outlets the world over have sought out Lin to discuss her viewpoints on China’s abuse of its citizens’ freedoms and rights” (Quartz). She has been invited to speak at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, the Oxford Union, and the Geneva Human Rights Summit at the UN, and has testified in the US Congress, the UK Parliament, and the Taiwanese Legislative Assembly.