Tom G. Palmer
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Tom Gordon Palmer (born 1956 in Moetsch, Germany) is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and is director of the Institute's educational division, Cato University.
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[edit] Professional life
Palmer earned his B.A. in liberal arts from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, his M.A. in philosophy from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and his doctorate in political science from Oxford University, where he was an H. B. Earhart Fellow at Hertford College.
Palmer has been active in the promotion of libertarian and classical liberal ideas and policies since the early 1970s. He has been editor of several publications, including Dollars & Sense (the newspaper of the National Taxpayers Union), Update, and the Humane Studies Review, and has published articles in such newspapers and magazines as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Spectator of London, National Review, Reason, and Slate and reviews and articles in a variety of journals, including Ethics, Constitutional Political Economy, Cato Journal, Critical Review, Etica e Politica, Hamline Law Review, and the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
He continues to teach political economy and legal and constitutional history for the Institute for Humane Studies and the Institute for Economic Studies–Europe. He also works with such organizations as Liberty Fund, the Council on Public Policy, and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which designated him in 2005 a member of their "International Freedom Corps." He blogs at his own website and at Cato@Liberty and is a contributor to the Independent Gay Forum. During the summers Palmer leads Cato University, a seminar sponsored by the Cato Institute.
[edit] Involvement in Eastern Europe
Before joining the Cato Institute, he was a vice president of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. During the late 1980s and the very early 1990s he worked with the Institute for Humane Studies and other organizations to spread classical-liberal/libertarian ideas in Eastern Europe. He traveled throughout the region to hold seminars and smuggled books, cash, photocopiers, and fax machines from an office in Vienna, Austria. He arranged for translation and publication into a variety of central and eastern European languages of textbooks in economics and law, as well as seminal works by Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and other thinkers in the libertarian and liberal traditions. [1][2]. He remains active in the region as organizer of a major Russian website (www.cato.ru) and a conference on "Freedom, Commerce, and Peace: A Regional Agenda" in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia.
[edit] Involvement in Middle East
Palmer is currently attempting to duplicate in the Middle East some of the work he did in Eastern Europe. He has commissioned translation into Middle Eastern languages (Arabic, Kurdish, Persian, and Azeri) and publication of works by Frederic Bastiat, F. A. Hayek, James Madison, and other libertarian influences, and has published essays in Middle Eastern languages on such topics as "Challenges of Democratization" and "Religion and the Law."[3] In April 2005 Palmer addressed members of the Iraqi parliament in the parliamentary assembly hall on constitutionalism and has written on Iraq.[4] [5][6]. He has also promoted the creation of a libertarian web site in Arabic where a number of additional translations are being published [7] and started an Arabic publishing venture. His involvement in the Middle East has been applauded by some [8] and criticized by others [9]. He continues to lecture in the Middle East and works closely with Arabic and Persian bloggers.
[edit] Works
Palmer has published essays on the philosophy of individual rights (e.g., in this essay from Individual Rights Reconsidered, edited by Tibor Machan (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2001)[10]), a substantive response to G. A. Cohen's attack on property rights[11]), several responses to the theories of Cass Sunstein and Stephen Holmes[12][13], and essays on multicultural politics[14], on globalization[15], on globalization and personal[16] and cultural identity[17], and on libertarian political philosophy[18][19][20][21][22]. Palmer also published an extensive bibliographical essay on libertarianism[23]in The Libertarian Reader, ed. by David Boaz. He has published law review articles[24][25] on intellectual property that have garnered substantial attention within the legal and technological community for his general critique of patents and copyrights and his suggestions of contractual and technological solutions to the problems for which intellectual property rights are usually proposed as solutions.
Palmer also currently publishes a popular blog, where he publishes his personal opinions on many topics and offers links to his published articles and essays.
[edit] Political activities
Palmer's political activities include being founding member and national secretary of the Committee Against Registration and the Draft (1979-81), president of the Oxford Civil Liberties Society (1993-94), and manager or communications director for several political campaigns. Palmer is a member of the board of trustees of the Foundation for Economic Education (created in 1946 by Leonard E. Read), a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, and a Freeman of the City of London.
[edit] External links
[edit] About Palmer
- Biography of Tom Palmer, Cato Institute.
- Institute for Humane Studies biography and publications
- TomGPalmer.com, Tom Palmer's personal weblog
- Jonathan Rauch on Palmer's work in Arab World "In Arabic, 'Internet' Means 'Freedom'"
[edit] Criticisms and critical exchanges with others
- "The Libertarian Straddle: Rejoinder to Palmer and Sciabarra", a critique of Tom Palmer's philosophy of rights by Jeffrey Friedman
- "What's Not Wrong With Libertarianism" a response to Jeffrey Friedman's critique of libertarianism
