Speakers Bureau
Doug Allen
- Doug Allen is the Burnaby Mountain professor of economics at Simon
Fraser University. His research is a little unusual for an economist.
Rather than study the terms of trade or levels of production, his
research has
focused on how exchange, production, and life in general
is organized. This has led him to study the family (marriage and
divorce, child supportguidelines, the life-cycle demand for sex, and
same sex marriage), the farm (share contracts, lease markets,
ownership of assets, and the survival of family run farm
enterprises), history (the purchase of military commissions, the
success of the British Navy during the age of sail, homesteading, the
Klondike gold rush, the practice of patronage in pre-modern times,
and dueling with pistols), and the general theory of organizations.
Professor Allen is the author of two popular undergraduate
microeconomic theory textbooks. He has also co-edited a book on the
family, co-authored a book on farm organization, and has recently
completed a book on pre-modern British institutions. He has also
received three teaching awards over the years, although he tells his
audiences to "not get their hopes up too much ... it is still
economics after all."
Tom Spence
-
Thomas Spence is president and publisher of Spence Publishing Company and
the director of Spence Media.
After graduating from Dartmouth College, he earned a law degree from the
University of Chicago and a master’s in history from Harvard. He was editor in chief atWRS Publishing
before founding Spence Publishing in 1996.
He has been featured in Publishers Weekly, the Boston Globe, the Dartmouth Review, Insight, and the Washington
Times and has written for the Dallas Morning News and the American Enterprise.
Jennifer Roback Morse, PhD
- Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is the founder and President of the Ruth Institute, a
non-profit educational institute promoting lifelong married love at home, at work and in the public
square. She is also the Senior
Research Fellow in Economics at the Acton Institute for theStudy of
Religion and Liberty.
She is the author of Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-up World, (2005) and Love
and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn’t Work (2001), recently reissued in paperback, as Love
and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.Dr. Morse served as a Research Fellow for Stanford University’s Hoover Institution from 1997-2005. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester in 1980 and spent a postdoctoral year at the University of Chicago during 1979-80. She taught economics at Yale University and George Mason University for 15 years. She was John M. Olin visiting scholar at the Cornell Law School in fall 1993. She is a regular contributor to the National Review Online, National Catholic Register, Town Hall, MercatorNet and To the Source.
Jennifer Lahl
- Jennifer Lahl, is founder and national director of
The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, an organization working to shed light on the bioethics issues within our culture that most profoundly affect our humanity, and advancing the voice of a morally
responsible science that respects the inherent value of humanity and that celebrates its beauty and complexity. Lahl couples her 25 years experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, hospital administrator and senior-level nursing management, with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. Lahl's' writings have appeared in various publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBC, PBS and NPR and called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members fo the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address egg trafficking. She is founding director of Every Woman First and serves on the North American Editorial Board for Ethics and Medicine as well as Board of Reference for Joni Eareckson Tada's Institute on Disability.
Helen Alvare, PhD
- Helen Alvare, J.D. is Senior Fellow in Law at the Culture of Life Foundation
and is an Associate Professor of
Law at the George Mason University School of Law inArlington,
Virginia. There she teaches and publishes inthe areas of property law, family law, and Catholic social
thought. From 2000 to Spring 2008, Professor Alvare taught at the Catholic University Columbus School
of Law. Professor Alvare also lectures widely in the United StatesEurope on matters concerning marriage,
family and respect for human life. She is a consultant to ABC News and to the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Marriage and Pro-Life Committees. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI named Professor
Alvare a Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Laity.
Bill Duncan
- William Duncan is the director of the Marriage Law Foundation,
a legal organization whose mission is providing legal resources in defense of marriage as the union
of a husband and wife. He previously served as acting director of the Marriage Law Project at the
Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law and a visiting professor at Brigham YoungUniversity’s
J. Reuben Clark Law School. He teaches family law to
undergraduates at BYU as an adjunct professor.
Mr. Duncan is the author of dozens of scholarly articles, book chapters and popular commentary on family
issues. These include articles published by the Rutgers University Law Review, Stanford Review of
Law and Politics, Ave Maria Law Review, and The Family in America. He has drafted pro-family legislation
that has been enacted in various states, submitted numerous legal briefs on behalf of pro-family
groups in cases attacking state definitions of marriage, and has testified in front of legislative
committees in a variety of states. He has also presented at academic conferences at many universities.
He edits a monthly publication, the Marriage Law Digest, which summarizes important cases and academic
literature involving marriage and family issues.
Mr. Duncan is married to Catherine Allred Duncan and they are the home schooling parents of seven children.
Trayce Hansen, PhD
- Dr. Trayce L. Hansen is a licensed psychologist with a clinical and forensic practice. She received her Ph.D. from the California School of Professional Psychology, San Diego, in
1997. Dr. Hansen’s professional experience is varied and includes work in multiple clinical as well as forensic settings. She is particularly interested in issues related to marriage, parenting, male/female differences, and homosexuality. Dr. Hansen has extensively reviewed the research literature in these areas and occasionally writes commentaries based on her findings that have been published worldwide. She has been heard on local and national radio and interviewed by the web and print media. Dr. Hansen also consults on legal cases and has testified in both deposition and court hearings related to her professional expertise.
Pat Fagan
- Senior Fellow
Director, Center for Family and Religion
Family Research Council. Patrick F. Fagan is a Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council since
October 2007. Prior to that he was the William H.G. FitzGerald Senior Research Fellow in Family and Cultural
Issues at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC where he examined the relationship between
family,
marriage, religion, community, and America’s social problems by utilizing social scientific research
to inform public policy on issues such as crime, abuse, welfare, adoption, education, income, and general
well-being.
Lynn D Wardle, Esq
- Senior Fellow
Lynn D. Wardle is the Bruce C. Hafen Professor of Law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young
University where
his teaching and writing focus
primarily on Family Law and related subjects. A graduate of Duke Law School
(1974) and Brigham Young University, he clerked for the Honorable Judge John J. Sirica, U.S. District
Court in Washington, D.C., 1974-75, practiced law in Arizona, since 1978 has taught at BYU Law School,
and has visited at law faculties at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), Sophia University (Japan),
University of Queensland, China University of Political Science and Law (Beijing), and Howard University.
He is past President of the International Society of Family Law, is a member of the American Law Institute,
and is active in the Federalist Society. He has testified about family-related law and policy before
committees of the U.S. House and Senate, and of many state legislatures. Some of his recent publications
are listed here.
