The College Fix

The libertarian student group Young Americans for Liberty at Washburn University hosted guest speaker, historian and political analyst Thomas Woods to speak to students on campus about the causes of the 2007-2008 economic meltdown.

Not everyone on campus was happy about the Woods lecture, however. Washburn University Political science professor Chris Hamilton, who is a self-proclaimed social justice advocate and environmentalist, distributed anti-Woods pamphlets at the event.

Woods delivered the lecture titled “The Financial Crisis: Capitalism not Guilty as Charged” to an auditorium of 130 students and Washburn faculty members.

Woods is politically aligned with the American libertarian movement that espouses a limited government and socially tolerant philosophical platform. He is also a proponent of the Austrian School of economics, which was made popular among libertarians by Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. Austrian economists believe that federal government regulations and the pegging of interest rates by the Federal Reserve is the reason why economies fall into recessions.

The Austrian economic view has, over the past 5 years, steadily gained adherents due primarily to increased government control over the economy, rising debt levels, and Federal Reserve monetary expansion.

Woods, who holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and a doctorate from Columbia University, argued that the academic and political sophisticate contention that capitalism was the reason why the economy tanked is untrue. “What I was trying to show was that to the contrary we didn’t have enough capitalism,” he told the Washburn Review.

Wood told the audience that a lion’s share of responsibility for the economic recession lies at the feet of the federal government.  The Federal Reserve’ ability to keep interest rates low, Woods said, is the primary contributor to the economic bubbles that we have seen over the past 30 years. Those unreasonably low interest rates, Woods told the audience, covers up bad investments in the economy—all of which eventually end up blowing up the economy once the rates begin to rise.

Professor Hamilton’s literature raked Wood’s over the coals for allegedly being a member of the League of the South and for passing himself off as an economist rather than a historian. The League of the South is made up of a group of Southerners who are concerned about the scope and size of the federal government. It is alleged that some members of the group have ties to white supremacist groups.

Hamilton’s allegation is a common refrain among many who disagree with Wood’s libertarian views. For example, he has been accused by civil rights group the Southern Poverty Law Center for being a founding member of the League of the South. Woods’s 2004 book “The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History,” which, among other things, asserts that the War on Poverty is really a war against poor people, has also been the target of criticism.

Woods told The College Fix that Hamilton is “a left-wing hysteric who specializes in ‘extremist groups’. He has published nothing. These are the types who tend to fixate on others.” Woods also told the Washburn Review that professor Hamilton “didn’t dare to confront me, he didn’t dare to ask me a question. He lists criticisms of me that I have replied to in spades.”

Indeed, Woods responded to the allegations on his website in 2005, saying “when I was 21 years old I was invited to a meeting of scholars and journalists who were concerned that the federal government was out of control.” Those scholars and journalists would go on to form the League of the South. He acknowledged the deplorable acts of Southern slave owners while, at the same time, suggesting “there was much of value in Southern civilization that deserved a fair hearing.”

Moreover, Woods said, “I knew that the organization would be a controversial one, since it maintained that American states possessed the right to secede. But I assumed that educated and fair-minded people would understand that Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and William Lloyd Garrison, (an abolitionist) and man other early Americans thought the same thing.”

The Washburn University Young Americans for Liberty chapter was upset by professor Hamilton’s disruptions. The vice president of the group, Hamad Nooh, told the College Fix in an interview that the Washburn University faculty has a long history of being tolerant of diverse viewpoints. But, Nooh went on, “accusing Dr. Woods of being a racist, and white supremacist would undermine Washburn University’s rich history of diversity and opportunities to their students.”

College Fix contributor Christopher White is a University of Missouri graduate student and an editorial assistant for The College Fix.

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