Grove City College will host the annual Austrian Student Scholars Conference on February 12-13, 2027. Open to undergraduates and graduate students in any academic discipline, the ASSC will bring together students from colleges and universities across the country and around the world to present their own research papers written in the tradition of Austrian School intellectuals such as Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Hans Sennholz. Accepted papers will be presented in a regular conference format to an audience of students and faculty.

In his book, The Confederate Negro: Virginia’s Craftsmen and Military Laborers, 1861-1865, the historian James H. Brewer describes the black Confederate as “a historical enigma,” ignored by historians who are uncertain what to make of him. Black Southerners did not fare well in what Brewer calls “the rugged contest for meaningful identification in a nation’s history.” He is concerned that,

Every generation produces its slew of mouthpieces for state power at the expense of freedom. Statist economists are some of the most sophisticated of these, for three reasons.

In the 1964 film The Pawnbroker, Rod Steiger plays Sol Nazerman, a Holocaust survivor who operates a pawnshop in Harlem. In one memorable scene, his young assistant asks him what he believes in. “Money,” he answers. Money has extraordinary powers. It can buy comfort, luxury, relief from pain, sometimes even life itself. Then he adds, his anger driving him:

This week in New York, under the banner “Restoring trust, managing transformation,” the world’s diplomats convened for the 81st UN General Assembly and decided, somewhere between the wars and the climate panic, that artificial intelligence now belongs on the short list of things only they can save us from.

According to the non-aggression principle, aggressive violence is never justified. But stating the principle is the easy part. Identifying the aggressor is more difficult when the facts are contested and when both sides, in their respective political parties, claim to be “defending” themselves against their aggressive enemies.