2025 Freedom Seminar to Explore Road to Serfdom and Path to Freedom
The 2025 Northwood University Freedom Seminar will survey the two alternative paths that humanity tried over the past century: the road to serfdom and the road to freedom. The first was examined by the Austrian economist F. A. Hayek, who chose it as a title to a book that exposed the economic bankruptcy, political dangers, and moral evils of two brands of socialism – Marxist (globalist) and Fascist (nationalist). The Road to Serfdom was also a warning to the free world that democracy will evolve into an oligarchical tyranny unless the people stay vigilant and are willing to fight for their rights.
During the past 80 years, we tested on a grand scale two different economic systems. The results are in. The lives of those who had the misfortune to be born where free enterprise was replaced by government command were ruined. Socialism’s state ownership of land and capital, with its comprehensive bureaucratic planning and controls of production and distribution, produced misery and oppression. Capitalism, with private ownership of productive resources, freedom to start businesses and compete for customers, with market allocation of resources and goods through the price system, has won the race.
This year’s Freedom Seminar consists of presentations on Tuesday evenings throughout the fall semester. Each week, a leading expert in academia, business or government will visit Northwood to provide insight into significant ideas, people, and historical turning points along “the road to freedom.”
The keynote address will be provided on Aug. 26, 2025, by Professor Daniel J. Smith, a Northwood Alumnus who is currently Director of the Political Economy Research Institute and Professor of Economics at the Jones College of Business at Middle Tennessee State University. He will be speaking on the continuing relevance of Hayek’s critique of socialism and its application to understanding today’s political trends.
On Sept. 16, 2025, John Chisholm, a serial entrepreneur with four decades of experience as a founder, CEO and investor in the technology sector, will explore various approaches we could take to regulating artificial intelligence. Like most new technologies, AI poses both predictable risks and unknowable risks. This presentation provides a framework for understanding how different types of AI regulation will ultimately impact our safety, innovation and quality of life.
On Sept. 30, 2025, Lawrence Reed will return to Northwood University where he taught as Professor and Chair of the Economics department before leaving to found the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which he served as President for 21 years. He is currently the President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty at the Foundation for Economic Education. In a lecture entitled “The Fall of Rome and Modern Parallels,” he will explain how many of the trends of our day echo those of the ancient Roman Republic — and how we can learn from their mistakes.
On Dec. 2, 2025, the capstone lecture of our Freedom Seminar Series will be provided by Art Carden, Professor of Economics at Samford University’s Brock School of Business, and coauthor of Northwood’s fall Omniquest selection, “Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World.” His thesis is that key changes in people’s thinking — i.e. a more positive view of free enterprise accompanied by the understanding that all people have equal dignity — not only led to a vast in improvement living standards but it ultimately made us better people, too.
These are just a few of the highlights of our fall series. There will also be presentations on Javier Milie’s reforms in Argentina, West Germany’s post-war “economic miracle,” the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions, the entrepreneurs who made America, and many others.
The annual Freedom Seminar is a showcase event for The Northwood Idea, Northwood’s institutional philosophy that recognizes the importance of personal freedom, individual responsibility, earned success, ethical leadership, personal property, rule of law, and free enterprise. All faculty, staff and students are encouraged to attend Freedom Seminar lectures, and members of the public are invited to join us at no cost.
Each Freedom Seminar lecture will begin at 6 p.m. every Tuesday throughout the fall semester. The entire schedule of events, along with detailed descriptions of speakers and topics, can be found online at www.northwood.edu/freedom-seminar. Please join us this fall as the Northwood University Freedom Seminar explores The Road to Freedom!
About this Piece
This piece is featured in the September 2025 edition of When Free to Choose, Northwood University’s signature monthly publication dedicated to exploring the importance of free enterprise and other tenets of The Northwood Idea. Click here to subscribe to this complimentary publication.