The Misesian: Dr. Jewell, what was your introduction to Austrian economics and the Mises Institute?
Jason Jewell: The presidential election of 2000 was a key moment for me. I was living in Tallahassee at the time, working on my PhD at FSU. As you may remember, Tallahassee was ground zero for the whole “hanging chads” controversy.
I had not paid much attention to politics in the years preceding, and while searching for some resources, I found the Mises Institute’s website. I started reading some of the texts on mises.org and got increasingly interested.
Then in 2002, I applied for Ralph Raico’s History of Liberty seminar, which was my first visit to the Institute. That summer I got to know people like Lew Rockwell, Tom DiLorenzo, and Tom Woods. Ever since, I’ve been in that orbit but on the periphery since I’m not an economist.
In 2004, I was hired as a history and humanities professor at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Alabama—just an hour away from the Institute. Over the next 20 years, I frequently visited the Institute and attended events while continuing my reading in Austrian economics.
I remember the intellectual thrill I had as a graduate student discovering the writings of Mises for the first time. I had checked his Theory and History out of the library, and I still remember how intellectually stimulating it was discovering insights on almost every page. This was the first time I had thought about history and economics together. I was hooked.
I began incorporating Austrian themes into my history courses and used Great Books classes to introduce students to economic thinking.
TM: You’ve taught in the humanities for many years. Given the leftward tilt of that field, what has that experience been like for you as a fan of Mises and Raico?
JJ: As a graduate student, discovering the writings of the Austrian economists helped to inoculate me against some of the influences that I was encountering in college. Early on in my PhD work, most of my professors were old-school liberals or old-school humanists who were not especially ideological themselves. They loved their material and didn’t force it into a political framework.
I appreciated those old-school professors more as I got further into my coursework. But when I began pedagogical training and encountered younger professors, recent Ivy League PhDs, the contrast was striking. They often came in with Marxist frameworks, many already influenced by critical theory.
Reading Austrian economists like Mises gave me an alternative theoretical framework that I used against the critical theory that these younger professors were promulgating in the classroom. It helped me recognize the internal contradictions of their views and offer a positive alternative. Many of them were English professors dabbling in Marxist economics without really understanding it. I was able to push back—both in class discussions and in my own teaching and scholarship. Having read Austrian economics, I was able to push back against much of the leftist classroom propaganda.
Faulkner is a fairly conservative school, but whenever I attended professional conferences or engaged with academics outside that setting, I was clearly in the minority. I eventually stopped attending many of those conferences—they weren’t offering much value, and we were often speaking different intellectual languages.
Fortunately, I found other scholarly associations whose thinking was compatible with the framework of Austrian economics, and who also took more traditional approaches to culture, history, and religion.
TM: Can you talk a little bit about your new position as chief academic officer for the State University System of Florida?
JJ: It was a bit serendipitous. I applied for a different position, but during the interview it became clear this was a new job that was being created. They were looking for someone with a pedological perspective who could help the Board of Governors address curricular issues related to new legislation.
One question I got during the interview process: Why on earth would you leave a tenured position to come work for an agency of the state government?
My answer then, as now, is that I think that this is important work. I can help inject a dose of rationality into the process.
In just two months, I’ve worked on everything from scrutinizing regulatory interpretations and how they apply to particular cases at particular schools to big-picture questions about what higher education should look like. It’s very different from classroom teaching. Now I’m thinking in terms of a whole university system, and there are indeed differences. But it’s been invigorating and I’m enjoying the challenges.
TM: Do you see potential for Florida to become a model for reforming higher education—one not reliant on Washington?
JJ: That’s a question I am very interested in. We’ve seen signals going in different directions recently, like getting rid of the Department of Education. The Trump administration seems to be signaling that it’s interested in returning more authority over education to the states, possibly in converting funding into block grants and pushing it down to the states to administer in different ways across the country. That would be a welcome move toward decentralization, allowing for more diverse approaches at the state level.
At the same time, Florida’s government has imposed mandates on its universities, such as the recent prohibition on DEI spending and reforms to the general education curriculum. These are both cases where the state government looked at all the individual universities and colleges in Florida’s higher education system and said, What you are doing in these areas is no longer tolerable, and you have to change. You could argue that’s a form of centralization, with Tallahassee asserting more control. My office is tasked with implementing those legislative changes.
Part of the problem—and some writers have made this case eloquently—is that these institutions have gotten to a point where it’s impossible for them to reform themselves because of the way faculty governance structures work.
The key point is that these institutions receive their funding from the state. Clearly, the state government has some kind of say in how those funds are spent. The legislature was careful to try to avoid First Amendment pitfalls in implementing these reforms. Faculty are still free to teach any courses they like, but the state can decide whether those courses count toward general education requirements. I think that’s a sensible balance, and my office has tried to reassure departments that their courses aren’t being removed—just reconsidered for core curriculum status.
As long as the state is involved in education— and that’s the case nationwide—these are the kinds of questions that have to be navigated.
TM: What advice would you give parents weighing college options for their children, especially with concerns about the current state of higher education?
JJ: I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all solution. Florida’s state government has made a political commitment to keep in-state tuition comparatively low for higher education. That can be an option if student debt is a concern. I would counsel parents and prospective students to be mindful of the majors they consider. Some majors have been ideologically colonized, and families should be vigilant here. Also, bear in mind the job prospects and potential earnings for graduates in these fields. State education is not for everybody.
For a lot of families, sending their children to private schools that share their religious faith is very important. I spent 20 years at a faith-based college. If that’s something that’s important, it could be worth the higher costs. You have to do your due diligence beforehand to see what the school’s policies are and whether there are any concerns about students losing that faith commitment or going woke or those kinds of things.
I would also encourage families to think carefully about why their children want to go to college. Is this just the next step, or does the student have a long-term plan toward a career? There are other avenues available for technical training and apprenticeships of all sorts. College is not a onesize- fits-all solution.
I’m not negative on higher education the way some people are. I think Florida in particular has a better overall higher ed environment than a lot of states, though it’s still not for everybody.
TM: For decades, Austrian economics and libertarian political theory have been intellectual minorities in higher education. Do you think Florida’s model could help foster more intellectual diversity in social science departments and beyond?
JJ: I don’t think there’s an obvious answer to that question at this time. I’m hopeful that Florida will move in that direction. There’s growing interest in promoting viewpoint diversity, and I think Florida’s legislature is aware of the problem.
I think it’s possible that there could be some kind of legislative reform, but I’m still learning a lot about the political environment. I don’t know what the best option is. It is a real concern that once you reach a critical mass of overly ideological faculty within a department, they’re able to take control of the hiring process, and those departments can quickly become echo chambers.
One option is for university presidents to use their “absolute” hiring authority more strategically. Florida law gives them that ultimate power. But that approach can create tension, and those hires may be marginalized. So it isn’t an ideal solution.
There are softer approaches a foot as well. There are thoughtful people who are experimenting with ways to bring faculty around to see the value of viewpoint diversity. Those people have made some headway, but it’s unclear if those approaches can scale.
There’s also the possibility of a legislative solution, if you can avoid affirmative-action-like quotas for people of particular ideological persuasions. No one in Florida is seriously proposing that, but there are creative ideas under discussion that might move us in the right direction, toward more viewpoint diversity in state universities.
Ultimately, it’s the humanities and social sciences where ideological bias is most relevant to the subject matter. I can’t speak in detail about pending proposals, but I can say that this conversation is happening. That’s a step in the right direction and maybe we’ll see progress in the next year or two.
