Today, a battle rages in our country. Many Americans are attracted to socialism and economic redistribution while opponents of those ideas argue for purer capitalism. Based on her book Great Society: A New History (HarperCollins Publishers, 2019), New York Times bestselling author, Amity Shlaes, offers a stunning revision of our last great period of idealism, the 1960s, with burning relevance for our contemporary challenges. In the 1960s, Americans sought the same goals many seek now: an end to poverty, higher standards of living for the middle class, a better environment and more access to health care and education. Drawing on deep historical knowledge, Ms. Shlaes upends the traditional narrative of the era, providing a damning indictment of the consequences of thoughtless idealism with striking relevance for today. Great Society: A New History captures a dramatic contest with lessons both dark and bright for our own time.

Amity Shlaes is the author of four New York Times bestsellers including Great Society: A New History, a comprehensive account of the Johnson administration’s most notable legacy. Ms. Shlaes chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation. She served on the editorial board for The Wall Street Journal and has written on foreign policy, taxation and other topics in her columns syndicated by Financial Times and Bloomberg. Currently, Ms. Shlaes' writing appears in Forbes and National Review.

Ms. Shlaes is a previous recipient and current juror for the Hayek Book Prize and Lecture 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. In 2004, she gave the Bradley Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute. Her lecture, titled “The Chicken vs the Eagle” looked at the effect of the National Recovery Administration on the entrepreneur in the New Deal. In 2021, The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation awarded Ms. Shlaes The Bradley Prize. Over the years, she has served at the Council on Foreign Relations and the George W. Bush Presidential Center, where she was one of four directors working on its Four Percent Growth Project.

James Heckman will discuss the benefits of participation in scholastic athletics at the high school, college, and intramural levels, with a focus on important economic and life outcomes. The lecture will explore how athletic participation is linked to higher graduation rates, post-school wages, and broader socio-economic mobility. By highlighting the skills and opportunities fostered through athletics, Prof. Heckman's lecture offers insights into the role sports plays in shaping academic and life-long success.   

James J. Heckman is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Public Policy and Director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development (CEHD) at The University of Chicago. In 2000, Prof. Heckman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on the microeconometrics of diversity and heterogeneity and for establishing a sound causal basis for public policy evaluation. He has received numerous other awards for his work, including the John Bates Clark Medal, the Jacob Mincer Award, the 2005 and 2007 Dennis Aigner Award for Applied Econometrics, the Ulysses Medal from the University College Dublin, the Theodore W. Schultz Award, the Gold Medal of the President of the Italian Republic, the Frisch Medal, the Dan David Prize, and the Chinese Government Friendship Award.

Prof. Heckman has devoted his professional life to understanding the origins of major social and economic questions related to inequality, social mobility, discrimination, and the formation of skills and regulation in labor markets, as well as to devising and applying empirical strategies for understanding and addressing these questions. His current research at CEHD includes analyzing the impact of early childhood programs around the world by studying the immediate and long-term impacts of interventions (including the impacts in midlife on health and on other family members), both in the United States and in a new project in China. He also collaborates with researchers in the United States, China, and Germany to measure preferences and trait building on his previous work showing the power of noncognitive skills. Prof. Heckman has initiated a series of studies measuring economic preferences and relating them to psychological traits. He has also guided a series of studies by affiliates on neighborhood sorting and the role of parental choice in neighborhood selection. His work disproves that “Zip Code is Destiny” and instead shows that family is destiny.

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, capitalism has unleashed unimaginable growth in opportunity and prosperity. And yet, at key points in American history, economic disruption has led to a greater role for government, ostensibly to protect against capitalism's excesses. Today, government regulates, mandates, subsidizes, and controls a growing share of the American economy. Based on his book, The Triumph of Economic Freedom: Debunking the Seven Great Myths of American Capitalism (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2025), Phil Gramm examines the seven events and issues in American history that define, for most Americans, the role of government and how the 21^st century world works. To many Americans, these five periods of American history, which include the Industrial Revolution, Progressive Era, Great Depression, decline of America's postwar preeminence in world trade, and the Great Recession, along with the existing levels of income inequality and poverty, represent strong evidence for expanding government in American life. Sen. Gramm argues that the evidence points to a contrary verdict: government interference and failed policies pose the most significant threat to economic freedom.

Phil Gramm has had a long and distinguished career in public service, academia, and the private sector. He served in the United States Congress representing Texas for more than two decades, first as representative for the 6^th congressional district representative in the House, then later as Senator. Sen. Gramm currently serves as a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He was Vice Chairman of UBS Investment Bank and is now Vice Chairman of Lone Star Funds. Sen. Gramm taught economics at Texas A&M University for 12 years before becoming a member of Congress.

Sen. Gramm's legislative record includes landmark bills like the Gramm-Latta Budget – which reduced federal spending, rebuilt national defense and mandated the Reagan tax cut – and the Gramm-Rudman Act, which placed the first binding constraints on federal spending. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Gramm steered legislation modernizing banking, insurance, and securities laws. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act amended the 70-year-old Glass-Steagall Act, allowing banks, security companies and insurance companies to affiliate through a financial services holding company.

Sen. Gramm has published numerous articles and books, including his most recent book The Triumph of Economic Freedom: Debunking the Seven Great Myths of American Capitalism (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2025) (co-authored with Donald J. Boudreaux of George Mason University).