The Right and the Future of Capitalism with Oren Cass and Samuel Gregg

On April 10, 2024, the James Madison Program hosted Oren Cass, Executive Director of American Compass, and Samuel Gregg, Friedrich Hayek Chair in Economics and Economic History at the American Institute for Economic Research, for a panel titled, "The Right and the Future of Capitalism." This event was an America's Founding and Future Lecture.

Recent years have seen a debate about whether conservatives should rethink their commitment to free-market principles, and whether a new economic approach is coming to conservatism. This event features commentary on that theme from two important commentators on the economy and the Right, Samuel Gregg of the American Institute for Economic Research and Oren Cass of American Compass.

Oren Cass is the executive director of American Compass and author of The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America (2018). He is a contributing opinion writer for the Financial Times. From 2005 to 2015, Oren worked as a management consultant in Bain & Company’s Boston and Delhi offices. During this period, he also earned his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was elected vice president and treasurer of the Harvard Law Review. While in law school, Oren served as Domestic Policy Director for Governor Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. From 2015 to 2019, he was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He founded American Compass at the start of 2020.

Samuel Gregg is the Friedrich Hayek Chair in Economics and Economic History at the American Institute for Economic Research, and an Affiliate Scholar at the Acton Institute. The author of 17 books—including the prize-winning The Commercial Society (Rowman & Littlefield), Wilhelm Röpke’s Political Economy (Edward Elgar), Becoming Europe (Encounter), the prize-winning Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization (Regnery), and most recently, The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World (Encounter), as well as over 700 articles and opinion-pieces—he writes regularly on political economy, finance, American conservatism, Western civilization, and natural law theory. Two of his books have been short-listed for Conservative Book of the Year, and one of his books was short-listed for the 2023 Hayek Prize. Many of his books and over 700 articles and opinion pieces have been translated into a variety of languages. He is also a Contributor to Law and Liberty and an Affiliate Scholar at the Acton Institute. In 2024, Gregg was awarded the Bradley Prize. The Bradley Prizes honor scholars and practitioners whose accomplishments reflect The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation’s mission to restore, strengthen, and protect the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism. He can be followed on Twitter @drsamuelgregg

Moderated by Greg Conti. Professor Greg Conti is a political theorist and intellectual historian. His research focuses on the history of modern political thought, especially on questions of liberalism, democracy, and representative government. His first book, Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian Britain, was released from Cambridge University Press earlier in 2019.

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