"Civil Liberties and the National Security State" February 15, 2014 Grand Hyatt, Washington D.C.

 

"Civil Liberties and the National Security State"

February 15, 2014

Grand Hyatt, Washington D.C.

 

FFF's "Conference within a Conference"

at the 2014 International Students for Liberty Conference

 

Featuring a 90-minute discussion with Academy Award winner Oliver Stone, 2014 Academy Award Nominee Jeremy Scahill, and “Untold History” co-producer Peter Kuznick, moderated by Newseum vice president Shelby Coffey.

 

 

Thanks to a generous grant, The Future of Freedom Foundation will host a “conference within a conference” at the 2014 International Students for Liberty conference at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C., February 14-16. Our conference within a conference will be on Saturday, February 15.

The theme is “Civil Liberties and the National Security State,” which is aimed at raising the vision of the attendees to the critical importance of civil liberties in a free society and to the grave threat to freedom posed by the national-security state.

You’ll see that the main feature is a 90-minute discussion in the main ballroom featuring Hollywood director Oliver Stone; Peter Kuznick, Stone’s collaborator on the Showtime series Untold History; and Jeremy Scahill, whose documentary, Dirty Wars, has been nominated for an Academy Award. The panel will be moderated by Shelby Coffey, vice chairman of the Newseum in D.C.

How did we pull that off? I recently met Oliver and Peter at a presentation in D.C. After exchanging friendly emails, I asked Oliver if he would be willing to speak at our “conference within a conference” and he readily agreed to do so. He suggested that we invite Peter, and the two of them then brought Jeremy aboard. Given that they are three of the nation’s biggest proponents of civil liberties and opponents of empire, interventionism, and the war on terrorism, this is sure to be one heckuva great discussion.

SFL is one of the two largest libertarian student organizations in the country. Last year its conference drew 1,300 people. This year, 1,600 are expected. One of the best things about the SFL conference is that it’s not limited to students. Anyone can attend. Registration for non-students is only $35! ($20 for students.) I hope you’ll consider joining us for what promises to be a tremendously enjoyable event. Here is the SFL conference website, where you can register and make hotel reservations.

 

 

10:00 am - 10:45 am: “America at the Crossroads of Civil Liberties in the 21st Century”

by Jonathan Turley

 

11:00 am - 11:45 am:  “The Dulles Brothers and America's Century of Regime Change”

by Stephen Kinzer

 

12:00 pm - 12:45 pm: “Crisis, Leviathan, and the National Security State”

by Robert Higgs

 

1:00 pm - 2:30 pm: Main Stage Session - “Imperial Overreach and the National Security State”

by Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick, and Jeremy Scahill, moderated by Shelby Coffey

 

3:00 pm - 3:45 pm: “Is the National Security Agency Out of Control?”

by Jameel Jaffer

 

4:00 pm - 4:45 pm: “Libertarianism vs. the Empire”

by Scott Horton and John Glaser

 

5:00 pm - 5:45 pm: “The Libertarian Angle Live with Special Guest Robert Higgs”

by Sheldon Richman and Jacob Hornberger

 

 

Oliver Stone is an American film director who received three Academy Awards for his work on the films Midnight Express, Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July. The many films he directed also include JFK, Natural Born Killers, The Doors, and Wall Street. Among his most recent work is the documentary miniseries that premiered on Showtime entitled “Untold History of the United States,” which is accompanied by a 750-page book of the same name.

 

Peter Kuznick is professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University and the co-author, with Oliver Stone, of the 10 part Showtime miniseries “The Untold History of the United States” and the accompanying New York Times best-selling book of the same title. He is the author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activists in 1930s America, co-author of two books on nuclear history published in Japan, and coeditor of Rethinking Cold War Culture. He is serving his fourth three-year term as Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer.

 

Jeremy Scahill is the National Security Correspondent for The Nation magazine and author of the international bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, which won the George Polk Book Award. His newest book is Dirty Wars: The War is a Battlefield. He also is a producer and writer of the film Dirty Wars, which won the Cinematography Award for U.S. Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival 2013 and which has now been nominated for a 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary. He has appeared on ABC World News, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, BBC, al Jazeera. CNN, Newshour, and Bill Moyers Journal. He will soon be working with journalist Glenn Greenwald on a new journalistic enterprise funded by Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar.

 

Shelby Coffey is vice chairman of the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Coffey was executive vice president at ABC News in New York before he joined CNN in 1999, where he was news chief at CNNfn. Prior to that, he served as editor of the Los Angeles Times. Earlier, he held editorial positions with the Dallas Times Herald, U.S. News & World Report and The Washington Post. In 2001, he was named a fellow of the Freedom Forum, where he studied and wrote about media and First Amendment issues.

 

Jonathan Turley holds the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at The George Washington University Law School where he teachers constitutional law, criminal procedure, and torts. He was the youngest person to receive an academic chair in GWU’s history, has been ranked in various studies as the second most cited "public intellectual" and among the top 500 lawyers for five years running. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal. He has also appeared on Meet the Press, ABC This Week, Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday. He often testifies before Congress on constitutional issues.

 

Stephen Kinzer is a veteran New York Times correspondent who reported from more than fifty countries on five continents. He is a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Stephen is the author of the 2013 book The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War, which has received reviews in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Wall Street Journal. His other books include Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, and Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future.

 

Jameel Jaffer is a human rights and civil liberties attorney who serves as deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union and the director of ACLU’s Center for Democracy, which houses the organization’s National Security Project, Human Rights Program, and Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. He is the co-author of the 2007 book Administration of Torture. Jameel litigated the first successful constitutional challenge to the USA Patriot Act and since 2004 has served as a human rights monitor for the military commissions at Guantanamo. He is a graduate of Williams College, Cambridge University, and Harvard Law School.

 

Scott Horton is the longtime host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles and KUCR 88.3 in Riverside, and the Scott Horton Show on Liberty Express Radio. In 2007 he won the Austin Chronicle’s “Best of Austin” award “Best Iraq War Insight and Play by Play” for Antiwar Radio. He has conducted more than 3,000 interviews since 2003. His articles have appeared at Antiwar.com, LewRockwell.com, History News Network, The Future of Freedom Foundation, and the Christian Science Monitor.

 

John Glaser is a 26-year-old independent writer and editor living in Washington, D.C. He was formerly editor at Antiwar.com, the Internet’s leading voice for a non-interventionist foreign policy. Before that, he was editorial assistant at the American Conservative magazine. He also served as an intern at the Cato Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies. His articles have appeared in the Washington Times, Huffington Post, Al Jazeera English, American Conservative, and Daily Caller.

 

Robert Higgs is senior fellow in Political Economy for the Independent Institute. He received his Ph.D. in economics from John Hopkins University and has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, and the University of Economics in Prague. He has also been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University. He is the author of Crisis and Leviathan, Delusions of Power, Depression, War, and Cold War, Neither Liberty Nor Safety, Resurgence of the Warfare State Against Leviathan, and other books. He is also the editor of Opposing the Crusader State, The Challenge of Liberty, Arms, Politics, and the Economy, and other books.

 

Sheldon Richman is the vice-president of The Future of Freedom Foundation and the editor of the FFF’s monthly journal Future of Freedom. He is the author of three books, Separating School & State, Tethered Citizens, and Your Money or Your Life. Sheldon served for 15 years as editor of The Foundation for Economic Education’s monthly journal The Freeman and before that was employed at the Cato Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, American Scholar, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, Counterpunch, and other publications.

 

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was a practicing lawyer in Texas for 12 years and an adjunct professor of law and economics at the University of Dallas. In 1987, he left the practice of law to accept the position of program director at The Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. He founded FFF in 1989 and is a co-editor or contributor to seven books published by FFF, including The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars and Liberty, Security, and the War on Terrorism. He and Sheldon Richman are the co-hosts of FFF’s weekly Internet show “The Libertarian Angle.”