Guy Herbert - 'The birth of the database state - planned parenthood or accident?'

General Secretary of NO2ID, a grassroots campaign against ID cards, Guy Herbert is a prominent figure in the fight for civil liberties in the wake of the progressive growth of the surveillance state in recent years. Most active in opposing the Identity Card project and the National Identity Register, which sits behind it and will collate the intimate personal details of all citizens, NO2ID also oppose the government's efforts to centralise medical records and fingerprint young children. Guy is an occasional contributor to The Guardian and libertarian blog Samizdata, and is professionally a business affairs consultant. He stood for parliament in 1992 for the Green Party, though he now considers himself a 'Tory anarchist.' He will speak on the origins and underlying ideology behind the database state, tracing its roots far deeper than the whim of headline-seeking New Labour ministers.

Tom G Palmer - 'Anarchism, Limited Government, and Liberalism: A Modest Case for Sacking the State'

Vice President of the Cato Institute and General Director of the Atlas Global Initiative, Dr Tom Palmer is a prominent libertarian activist and former H B Earhart Fellow at Hertford College. Whilst at Oxford, he co-ordinated the Hayek Society, which preceded the Libertarian Society, and was President of the Oxford Civil Liberties Society. He was more recently one of the original plaintiffs in the DC vs. Heller gun rights case in the US, where the Supreme Court struck down state government restrictions on handgun ownership. He has recently published an edited collection of his essays, Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History and Practice, which defends libertarianism from its critics (including direct responses to Oxford Professors David Miller and the late G A Cohen), and ably sets out, with one eye on history, the case for individual freedom and property rights.

The video of his last lecture at the society, in Michaelmas Term 2008, is available on our blog. His topic then was 'Liberty as a remedy to poverty; socialism as a cause.'

Christie Davies -'The Right and Duty to Tell Politically Incorrect Jokes'

Author of Jokes and their Relation to Society, The Mirth of Nations and The Right to Joke, Christie Davies is Professor Emeritus of Sociology. His research concentrates on the comparative and historical study of humour and morality, in which latter field he has published The Strange Death Of Moral Britain. He sits on the Advisory Council of the Social Affairs Unit and the Bruges Group, and last year filed an amicus brief with the South Eastern Legal Foundation to the US Supreme in support of Heller in the same gun rights case mentioned above. He will argue that we have not only the right to tell politically incorrect jokes that may offend all manner of sensibilities, but often a duty to do so as well.

Nigel Farage MEP -'Too Much Government: Westminster and Brussels'

Leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage is a Member of the European Parliament for South East England and one of Britain's best known Eurosceptics. First elected to the EU Parliament in 1999, then re-elected in 2004 and 2009, where UKIP beat Labour and the Liberal Democrats into second place, he is a vocal advocate of British withdrawal from the European Union and limited government within the UK. He announced in September his intention to fight for a seat in the UK parliament at the next general election over the issue of MP expenses, challenging the newly-elected Conservative speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, in his Buckinghamshire seat. He will speak on the growth of the state in recent years and the most effective means of rolling back government intervention at a European and national level.

Dr Helen Evans & Shane Frith - 'Alternatives to Government-Run Healthcare'

The ubiquitous assumption in British political discourse is that state control of healthcare is a necessary policy to ensure universal access to high quality care, free from profit-motivated decision making. Our speakers challenge this assumption, arguing that evidence from voluntary schemes around the world present a compelling case for rejecting the deference to state-run systems of healthcare. Arguing from her experience as a senior nurse in the NHS, Helen Evans will tackle the reform of healthcare provision, criticising the rationing and bureacracy of NICE, and the special interests served by the state's position as a monopolist in healthcare. Shane Frith will discuss alternatives means of funding healthcare, in particular examining the possibilities of health savings accounts and private medical insurance as means of lowering costs, reducing moral hazard (the tendency to overconsume healthcare because it's 'free' to the end user) and encouraging medical innovation.

Dr. Helen Evans is the Founder and Director of Nurses for Reform, a UK think tank that campaigns for more consumer-led and sustainable healthcare systems in Britain and throughout around the world. A senior nurse with more than twenty years experience in the NHS, her career has seen her work in some of Britain's leading hospitals, including the Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust, the Royal London Hospital NHS Trust and St. Bartholomew's Hospital. She holds a degree in Health Management, and was awarded a Ph.D in Health Economics from Brunel University in 2006. She is a Health Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, and has recently published Sixty Years On: Who Cares for the NHS? via the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Shane Frith is the Director of Progressive Vision, a London-based think tank that promotes classical liberalism and free markets, and founder of Doctor's Alliance, a pan-European network of medical professionals seeking better ways to deliver healthcare. Formerly Chairman of the International Young Democratic Union, he is active in centre-right politics in the UK and his native New Zealand, and has worked at Reform, the Centre for Policy Studies and Open Europe in recent years.

Kenneth Minogue -'How Political Idealism Threatens Our Civilization'

Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the London School of Economics, Kenneth Minogue is a well known conservative political thinker. An avowed opponent of rationalism in politics, his 1985 book Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology (discussed here in an interview with the late William F Buckley) dissects and refutes the dominant ideological strains of the first part of the 20th century - fascism and communism - whilst his earlier work The Liberal Mind discusses the characteristics and deficiencies of liberalism, in both its modern and classical variants. He is presently a director of the Centre for Policy Studies and a trustee of Civitas, and a former Chairman of the Bruges Group. He will discuss the threat posed by political idealism to civilization as a spontaneously emergent phenomenon.

Eric Mack -'The Natural Right of Property'

Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, Eric Mack is a leading classical liberal political philosopher, with special interests in the foundations of moral rights and property rights. He frequently publishes on these and other topics, nd has edited for Liberty Fund two libertarian classics - Auberon Herbert's The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays, and Herbert Spencer's The Man Versus the State. He has recently completed a new biography and critical exposition of the work of John Locke and is widely regarded as an authority on natural rights. He will speak about the moral foundations of property rights, drawing on the work of Locke amongst others, and will defend the right to acquire and retain property without interference.

Bart Wilson - 'Discovering how Socioeconomic Orders Form in the Laboratory'

Holder of the Donald P. Kennedy Endowed Chair in Economics and Law at Chapman University, Bart Wilson specialises in the study of experimental economics and industrial organisation. He has published extensively in both fields, frequently collaborating with Nobel Laureate in Economics, Vernon L Smith, and is a guest lecturer at the Institute for Humane Studies.

The lecture will draw on three recent papers concerned with the emergence of property rights and spontaneous order: “Historical Property Rights, Sociality, and the Emergence of Impersonal Exchange in Long-distance Trade;” "Anarchy, Groups, and Conflict: An Experiment on the Emergence of Protective Associations;""An Experimental Inquiry into the Social Construction of Property."

The Centre for Experimental Social Sciences will now be hosting this event. Please email nicholas.cowen [at] worc.ox.ac.uk to register your interest.