WEBVTT NOTE Guerrilla Teaching 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:12.000 Okay, good afternoon. It's a great pleasure to be here as always, although I don't like being the last person between you and Lew Rockwell. 2 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:21.000 When the schedule first came out, I was looking at it and I complained to my wife that I had to speak right before Lew and she pointed out, 3 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:29.000 well, it could be worse. You could be the person who has to follow Lew. I think she certainly has a good point. 4 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:40.000 As you know, our goal at the Mises Institute is to bring about a truly free society, a society devoted to liberty, to the free market, to peace. 5 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:48.000 Now, there are other organizations that share some of these goals, promoting free market economic policy, for instance. 6 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:55.000 Nonetheless, the Mises Institute is unique in at least two ways. 7 00:00:55.000 --> 00:01:11.000 The first is that we're hardcore. Following Mises and Rothbard, we're intransigent, we're uncompromising, single-minded, we're not warm and fuzzy. 8 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:20.000 Well, Professor Hoppe, perhaps, but not the rest of us. 9 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:25.600 What Milton Friedman famously said of Mises, namely that Mises was, quote, 10 00:01:25.600 --> 00:01:31.280 intolerant, Friedman and others would surely say of us at the Mises Institute 11 00:01:31.280 --> 00:01:36.800 as well. And I mean, yeah, that's right, we're intolerant of error, falsehood, 12 00:01:36.800 --> 00:01:43.560 foolishness, compromise, etc. Second thing that makes the Institute unique is 13 00:01:43.560 --> 00:01:48.680 that we employ a different strategy for many of these other organizations. There 14 00:01:48.680 --> 00:01:54.680 There are free market think tanks in Washington D.C. for instance, that produce hundreds 15 00:01:54.680 --> 00:02:01.960 of policy reports, analyses of particular regulations and so on. 16 00:02:01.960 --> 00:02:08.800 Their primary goal, the primary goal of those organizations is to influence the elites, 17 00:02:08.800 --> 00:02:15.960 government officials, politically corrected businessmen, status intellectuals and so on. 18 00:02:15.960 --> 00:02:24.300 These free market Fabians believe that they can gradually push the elites in a direction 19 00:02:24.300 --> 00:02:27.000 of more liberty. 20 00:02:27.000 --> 00:02:32.300 Now of course at the Mises Institute we also analyze current policies, academic fads and 21 00:02:32.300 --> 00:02:37.980 fashions and the like, but our primary objective is not to persuade the elites. 22 00:02:37.980 --> 00:02:45.020 As Rothbard pointed out in his seminal works on strategy, the Fabian approach simply cannot 23 00:02:45.020 --> 00:03:12.020 The Fabians were the 19th century British socialists who believed they could bring about a socialist society in Britain, not through a violent revolution or overthrow of the government, but rather gradually, step by step, by gaining positions of influence, access to important decision makers, and then gradually nudging them bit by bit in the direction of socialism. 24 00:03:12.020 --> 00:03:21.020 Well, it worked for the Fabians. But as Rothbard pointed out, that same strategy cannot work for libertarians or for classical liberals. 25 00:03:21.020 --> 00:03:31.020 And the reason is quite simple. It's because in the Fabian case, the Fabians were pushing the elites in a direction in which they already wanted to go. 26 00:03:31.020 --> 00:03:36.020 Right? More power for themselves, less liberty for the rest of us. 27 00:03:36.020 --> 00:03:44.020 It's a completely different matter to try to persuade those who hold political power to give it up to make the rest of us better off. 28 00:03:44.020 --> 00:03:57.520 I was reminded of this distinction when I was recently reading some interesting dialogue on the personal website of an individual with a large Washington, D.C. free market think tank, 29 00:03:57.520 --> 00:04:03.560 where there was sort of a wide open discussion of different approaches to promoting liberty 30 00:04:03.560 --> 00:04:08.240 and the complaints about how some organizations like the Mises Institute try to do it. 31 00:04:08.240 --> 00:04:14.040 And this individual said, well, you know, some groups are out there, you know, meeting 32 00:04:14.040 --> 00:04:18.880 amongst themselves and preaching to the choir and doing all this far out stuff on the fringes. 33 00:04:18.880 --> 00:04:20.280 Well, that doesn't do any good. 34 00:04:20.280 --> 00:04:22.560 That doesn't have any, they don't have any influence. 35 00:04:22.560 --> 00:04:26.560 He said, well, we talk to the people who really matter. 36 00:04:26.560 --> 00:04:32.560 He said, for example, I was recently in Russia with a group of classical liberals at a conference 37 00:04:32.560 --> 00:04:37.560 and we were granted an audience with Vladimir Putin. 38 00:04:37.560 --> 00:04:42.560 We have to influence Putin's policies. 39 00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:48.560 And I thought to myself, to quote the Dr. Evil character in Austin Powers, 40 00:04:48.560 --> 00:05:04.560 Right. I'm thinking, yeah, that's all Russia needs. If we could just get Putin a subscription to the Freeman, everything in Russia will be fine. 41 00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:11.560 Of course, that ignores the basic problem that Vladimir Putin has no desire to institute the free market in Russia. 42 00:05:11.560 --> 00:05:17.560 It would not be in his interest to bring about the kinds of reforms that we would all support. 43 00:05:17.560 --> 00:05:31.560 So at the Institute, our primary goal, our long-range purpose, is not to convert the elites, but rather to educate both those who are experienced students of liberty and those who are new to the movement. 44 00:05:31.560 --> 00:05:41.560 We're primarily, of course, a research and educational organization, not a policy think tank. We promote the Austrian School of Economics in the tradition of Mises and Rothbard. 45 00:05:41.560 --> 00:05:47.200 Now keeping with the title of my talk, Guerrilla Teaching, we recognize that change is not 46 00:05:47.200 --> 00:05:53.640 likely to come from the top down by taking over the economics departments of all the 47 00:05:53.640 --> 00:05:58.360 Ivy League schools and imposing Austrian economics on the world, but rather change 48 00:05:58.360 --> 00:06:06.800 is likely to come from the bottom up through a small but dedicated, hardcore cadre of intellectual 49 00:06:06.800 --> 00:06:08.520 activists for liberty. 50 00:06:08.520 --> 00:06:25.520 Let me just elaborate for a moment on this concept of the hardcore, which was very important for Rothbard. He defined the hardcore as full-time professional intellectuals, scholars, teachers, writers, and so on, who develop and advance the basic doctrine of the movement. 51 00:06:25.520 --> 00:06:33.520 In a 1962 memo to F. A. Harper, Baldy Harper, the founder of the Institute for Humane Studies, Rothbard pointed out, 52 00:06:33.520 --> 00:06:39.520 quote, the hardcore is the soul and wellspring of every intellectual or spiritual revolution in society, 53 00:06:39.520 --> 00:06:45.520 whether it be Christianity or the Enlightenment or French liberalism or Marxism. 54 00:06:45.520 --> 00:06:53.520 Rothbard continued, the advancement of any idea or set of ideas and specifically the great system of libertarian or classical liberal ideas 55 00:06:53.520 --> 00:07:08.520 can only come about by 1. research in the development of the system of ideas by the hardcore, and 2. education, education of the various strata of society, specifically, 56 00:07:08.520 --> 00:07:18.520 A. Advancement in the knowledge and depth of understanding of the problem by the various members of the hardcore themselves. 57 00:07:18.520 --> 00:07:25.520 B. Advancement further along in a libertarian direction of fellow travelers and of the previously uninterested. 58 00:07:25.520 --> 00:07:34.520 C. The recruitment into the hardcore of people who have advanced this far along the path of libertarian understanding. 59 00:07:34.520 --> 00:07:42.520 Well, our mission at the Institute, of course, includes both of these basic elements, research and education. 60 00:07:42.520 --> 00:07:49.520 How do we attempt to achieve our objectives? Well, there are at least two channels. 61 00:07:49.520 --> 00:07:58.520 One is we attempt to achieve these objectives directly through our own conferences, professional conferences and our teaching conferences, 62 00:07:58.520 --> 00:08:01.520 the most important of which being the Mises University, of course. 63 00:08:01.520 --> 00:08:20.520 But second, we also try to do research and educate indirectly by training and supporting current and future researchers and teachers from everything from professors at major research universities to instructors at community colleges and even high schools. 64 00:08:20.520 --> 00:08:24.520 And let me speak for just a moment about these teaching conferences. 65 00:08:24.520 --> 00:08:29.120 Conferences are extremely important for the educational mission and I'll 66 00:08:29.120 --> 00:08:33.160 mention two. One is the Austrian Scholars Conference, which is an academic 67 00:08:33.160 --> 00:08:38.160 conference designed to educate hardcore scholars about each other's work, to 68 00:08:38.160 --> 00:08:42.640 influence sympathetic fellow travelers and ultimately to recruit new scholars 69 00:08:42.640 --> 00:08:49.880 into the hardcore, going back to Rothbard's strategy. The second conference 70 00:08:49.880 --> 00:08:53.960 is the Mises University. This is an educational conference designed to 71 00:08:53.960 --> 00:09:17.960 Essentially, to do the same thing for top graduate and undergraduate students, namely to educate those who are already converted, so to speak, to our way of thinking, to expose them to the full set of libertarian ideas across a variety of disciplines, also to influence sympathetic fellow travelers among students, and third, to recruit the best and brightest of the next generation into our movement. 72 00:09:17.960 --> 00:09:27.480 What we now call the Mises University began back in 1986 with a three-day instructional 73 00:09:27.480 --> 00:09:31.760 conference titled Introduction to Austrian Economics. 74 00:09:31.760 --> 00:09:37.200 The faculty were Lew Rockwell, Roger Garrison, and four graduate students at Auburn University. 75 00:09:37.200 --> 00:09:40.740 There were about 30 students attending. 76 00:09:40.740 --> 00:09:45.240 The next year the conference was expanded to a week-long affair covering all the major 77 00:09:45.240 --> 00:09:53.240 and the major aspects of Austrian theory and policy and was moved to Stanford University, the campus of Stanford, in the summertime, just down the road. 78 00:09:53.240 --> 00:10:02.240 In 1987 and 88, the conference at Stanford was small and targeted toward advanced graduate students. 79 00:10:02.240 --> 00:10:07.240 In 1989, it was expanded dramatically and renamed the Mises University. 80 00:10:07.240 --> 00:10:13.240 There were classes for undergraduates and graduate students with individualized schedules, 81 00:10:13.240 --> 00:10:19.240 In other words, concurrent classes for over 100 students and the faculty grew from 4 to 12. 82 00:10:20.240 --> 00:10:30.240 After a couple of years at Claremont McKenna College in 1993 and 1994, the conference was moved to Auburn University or to Auburn, Alabama where it has remained ever since. 83 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:37.240 And since 2001, the conference has been held on the campus of the Mises Institute at the Mises building. 84 00:10:37.240 --> 00:10:52.240 This last year's conference, there were two this past year in 2004. Each one featured about 12 speakers and over the course of the two conferences we had about 200 students attend. 85 00:10:52.240 --> 00:10:59.240 There were 61 plenary lectures, small lectures, panel discussions and seminars at each week-long conference. 86 00:10:59.240 --> 00:11:21.240 Now, because the Institute is committed to Rothbard's vision of a unified interdisciplinary science of liberty, the Mises University focuses not only on economics, but also on history, philosophy, political science, and even literature, journalism, and career strategy. 87 00:11:21.240 --> 00:11:24.240 What do students think of the Mises University? 88 00:11:24.240 --> 00:11:34.240 Well, I collected some quotations from students that students have included on their end of the conference evaluation forms that they turn in. 89 00:11:34.240 --> 00:11:38.240 And I'll just quote a few of them for you. 90 00:11:38.240 --> 00:11:47.240 Students have called it, quote, an incredible experience, an intellectual adventure, and a mind-opening event. 91 00:11:47.240 --> 00:11:52.240 The most incredible, stimulating and exciting intellectual experience I've ever had. 92 00:11:52.240 --> 00:11:56.240 A semester's worth of education in a week. 93 00:11:56.240 --> 00:11:58.240 A lot of students make a comment like that. 94 00:11:58.240 --> 00:12:01.240 Worth more than all my other educational experiences combined. 95 00:12:01.240 --> 00:12:08.240 A fantastic opportunity, these are verbatim quotes here, 96 00:12:08.240 --> 00:12:13.240 a fantastic opportunity for students who can otherwise become discouraged all through school. 97 00:12:13.240 --> 00:12:25.240 Here you have a chance to hear lectures by people whose books and articles you read all the time on Mises.org and elsewhere. You develop great camaraderie with people like you, something hard to come by in school. 98 00:12:25.240 --> 00:12:36.240 This alludes to a point that Walter Block made this morning about isolation, about libertarian students and scholars often being a minority of one at their own schools. 99 00:12:36.240 --> 00:12:46.240 It is what you always wanted college to be, an intellectual pursuit in which every day is filled with challenging ideas and good friends. 100 00:12:46.240 --> 00:12:51.240 Another student commented, I wish my university studies year-round could be like this. 101 00:12:51.240 --> 00:13:04.240 Let me give you some reflections collected from another former student at the Mises University whom I know very well, namely me. 102 00:13:04.240 --> 00:13:15.240 I first attended the Mises University in 1988, and it remains one of the most important intellectual experiences of my life. 103 00:13:15.240 --> 00:13:23.240 Before 1988, I had never met an Austrian economist, nor anyone remotely interested in Austrian economics. 104 00:13:23.240 --> 00:13:32.240 I had been an economics major in college, but only one of my professors, who was sort of a quasi-Marxist, had ever heard of the Austrian School. 105 00:13:32.240 --> 00:13:43.240 Now, sometime during my senior year of college, I happened to see a flyer on a campus bulletin board advertising scholarships from the Mises Institute. 106 00:13:43.240 --> 00:13:51.240 And I had an experience like the one Jeff just described, you know, walking by the brass plaque, thought, someone named an Institute after him? 107 00:13:51.240 --> 00:14:01.240 Wow, that's amazing. So I quickly got in touch with the folks at the Institute, was able to come out to California that summer for Mises University 108 00:14:01.240 --> 00:14:08.240 The conference itself was exhilarating. I got to meet Murray Rothbard, Hans Hoppe, Roger Garrison, David Gordon, a couple of dozen bright students. I still have my notes, by the way, from the first Mises University that I attended. I wish I had remembered to bring them with me to show you. 109 00:14:31.240 --> 00:14:37.440 There are 44 single-spaced pages, and I still refer back to them quite often. 110 00:14:37.440 --> 00:14:44.400 I was completely and utterly mesmerized, not only by the content of the lectures and discussions, 111 00:14:44.400 --> 00:14:50.880 which were great, but by the mere fact of being surrounded by a bunch of hardcore Austrians, 112 00:14:50.880 --> 00:14:56.320 some of whom I found out were even more hardcore than me. 113 00:14:56.320 --> 00:15:05.520 I quoted Rothbard earlier to the effect that it's just as important to protect and develop the hardcore itself as it is to recruit new members into the movement. 114 00:15:05.520 --> 00:15:11.200 And I think I speak for all of the faculty who have the privilege of teaching at the Mises University. 115 00:15:11.200 --> 00:15:16.960 And when I say that, I think we get more out of it every year than the students do. 116 00:15:16.960 --> 00:15:21.840 OK. Now, besides the conferences that the Mises Institute runs, 117 00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:26.840 The Institute, particularly through Mises.org, also supports college and high school teachers 118 00:15:26.840 --> 00:15:29.120 around the world. 119 00:15:29.120 --> 00:15:33.600 In my own classes at the University of Missouri, I rely heavily on Mises Institute books and 120 00:15:33.600 --> 00:15:34.960 materials. 121 00:15:34.960 --> 00:15:40.400 Many of the lectures, many of my class lectures, lectures are patterned after or modeled after 122 00:15:40.400 --> 00:15:45.720 lectures that I heard once many years ago at a Mises conference. 123 00:15:45.720 --> 00:15:53.960 In preparation for this talk, I sent an email to our Mises faculty listserv asking my colleagues 124 00:15:53.960 --> 00:16:00.240 to comment on how they use Mises Institute materials in their own teaching, how the Mises 125 00:16:00.240 --> 00:16:07.080 Institute has affected their careers as educators, and I got some amazing responses. 126 00:16:07.080 --> 00:16:14.960 Just briefly to summarize a few of those, many professors around the country and around 127 00:16:14.960 --> 00:16:19.760 The World Use Materials from Mises.org in the classroom. 128 00:16:19.760 --> 00:16:24.360 One colleague said, quote, the books and articles available at Mises.org are invaluable to my 129 00:16:24.360 --> 00:16:25.360 teaching. 130 00:16:25.360 --> 00:16:30.320 Rarely do I teach a class that I did not incorporate one of the daily articles as a discussion 131 00:16:30.320 --> 00:16:36.160 piece illustrating some economic principle we've just gone over with contemporary events. 132 00:16:36.160 --> 00:16:40.720 The daily articles, quote, from another professor, always have real-world applications that can 133 00:16:40.720 --> 00:16:42.840 be used in my principal's classes. 134 00:16:42.840 --> 00:16:47.000 They're easy and enjoyable for the students to read, and I think a lot of that is due 135 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:51.420 to Jeff Tucker's skilled editing. 136 00:16:51.420 --> 00:16:56.400 One professor said, I often feel like a single voice crying in the wilderness, but with these 137 00:16:56.400 --> 00:17:02.160 articles and books available on the web, I'm no longer alone in this regard. 138 00:17:02.160 --> 00:17:10.200 Professors use Mises Institute books as textbooks, link sections or entire texts from course 139 00:17:10.200 --> 00:17:24.200 We encourage our best students to attend the Mises University, where they can be exposed to many of these things first-hand. 140 00:17:24.200 --> 00:17:35.200 Many professors use this faculty listserv that I mentioned as a way to get advice, feedback, to discuss strategy with other professors. 141 00:17:35.200 --> 00:17:42.200 Many of us get great teaching tips from watching the other professors at the Mises University and other conferences. 142 00:17:44.440 --> 00:17:50.120 I was very touched by hearing from one professor at a small community college who said that, 143 00:17:51.920 --> 00:18:01.040 essentially, he said without Mises.org, he would not be employed in his current job. There's no way he could perform his job without it. 144 00:18:01.040 --> 00:18:04.680 He said, quote, the Mises Institute has truly been a lifesaver and 145 00:18:05.200 --> 00:18:17.200 in this regard in two ways. He said, without a graduate degree in economics proper, I've basically learned my economics, anything that I know beyond the basics, from people like you at the Mises Institute. 146 00:18:17.200 --> 00:18:34.200 And as this gentleman pointed out to me, there are a lot of community colleges, technical colleges, staffed by faculty who don't have a formal advanced training in economics, who don't have advanced degrees in economics, but pick up little bits and pieces here and there. 147 00:18:34.200 --> 00:18:41.200 The more of those folks we can direct towards our materials, the more we can educate in the Austrian School. 148 00:18:41.200 --> 00:18:48.200 OK. How about the future? Well, I think the educational mission of the Institute is more important than ever today. 149 00:18:48.200 --> 00:18:56.200 And we have unprecedented opportunities for growth and influence because, as I've mentioned, some of you have heard me talk about this on other occasions, 150 00:18:56.200 --> 00:19:03.200 the traditional institutions of higher education are themselves in a state of crisis today. 151 00:19:03.200 --> 00:19:33.200 I mean, if you think about it, the modern university is quite an anachronism, the concept of higher education goes back at least to medieval antiquity, but the modern university with its sprawling campus, complexes of classroom buildings, libraries, labs, dorms, offices and so on, it's only a hundred, hundred and fifty years old, and the truth is that most of these institutions are simply much too large. They're unable to perform economic calculation, as Mises explained in his 152 00:19:33.200 --> 00:19:36.640 Work on the Socialist Calculation Debate. 153 00:19:36.640 --> 00:19:41.160 In all likelihood, the university of the future will be radically decentralized. 154 00:19:41.160 --> 00:19:46.980 Already, much of the intellectual activity in the U.S. and a lot of the real academic 155 00:19:46.980 --> 00:19:52.520 research takes place not in the established universities, but in private organizations 156 00:19:52.520 --> 00:19:57.720 and think tanks, in private research institutes like the Mises Institute. 157 00:19:57.720 --> 00:20:10.720 Many university professors dream of having a position at a private institution like this, where they don't have to teach huge lecture classes filled with indifferent students. 158 00:20:10.720 --> 00:20:17.720 They don't have to deal with the politicized curricula and the mandatory sensitivity training sessions and all the rest of it. 159 00:20:17.720 --> 00:20:29.720 In the memo to F.A. Harper, Baldie Harper that I quoted before, Rothbard also has an interesting passage where he describes his ideal educational institution. 160 00:20:29.720 --> 00:20:41.720 It should be located close to a good university library, he wrote, although with the work that Jeff described on Mises.org, even that criterion may become obsolete. 161 00:20:41.720 --> 00:20:51.720 But this ideal educational institution should not be formally affiliated with the university, in Rothbard's view. Rothbard said the following, quote, 162 00:20:51.720 --> 00:21:04.720 Our intellectual revolution cannot and will not come about simply via the existing academic establishment, which fosters narrowness, conformity, orthodoxy, etc. 163 00:21:04.720 --> 00:21:12.720 All major intellectual revolutions of the past have taken place in new centers of study outside the established universities. 164 00:21:12.720 --> 00:21:18.720 Rothbard then quotes a passage from a book called The Crisis of Western Education. 165 00:21:18.720 --> 00:21:19.720 The quotation is the following. 166 00:21:19.720 --> 00:21:26.720 We should note that the progress and diffusion of the Enlightenment was in large measure due to special institutes and academies, 167 00:21:26.720 --> 00:21:30.720 such as the Royal Academy of London and the Academy of Sciences in Paris. 168 00:21:30.720 --> 00:21:45.720 This is particularly important because the universities were, for the most part, indifferent, if not hostile, to the Enlightenment, and in fact did not then carry on the research activities which were necessary to the promoting of useful knowledge. 169 00:21:45.720 --> 00:21:55.440 Well, the Mises Institute functions exactly as such a new institution, a new, more radical 170 00:21:55.440 --> 00:22:02.760 and unencumbered organization that is free to pursue radical scholarship in the science 171 00:22:02.760 --> 00:22:03.760 of liberty. 172 00:22:03.760 --> 00:22:08.360 That's why the research and particularly the teaching functions of the institute are 173 00:22:08.360 --> 00:22:18.840 are so important and that's why the research activities of the institute and particularly 174 00:22:18.840 --> 00:22:25.200 the teaching function, for example Mises University, other educational conferences, books and materials, 175 00:22:25.200 --> 00:22:31.440 resources for teachers are so critically important to bringing about the future that we all imagine 176 00:22:31.440 --> 00:22:33.920 and we thank you for making all of this possible. 177 00:22:38.360 --> 00:22:40.360 Thank you very much.