FUSION explores pressing issues from a perspective rooted in the tradition of liberty.
Why another journal of ideas in an already saturated media environment? Awash in “hot takes,” we believe there is unmet demand for thoughtful, deliberate commentary informed by genuine expertise. That is particularly true when it comes to arguments that emphasize the indispensable, although not exclusive, roles of individual liberty and constitutional government in securing political, economic, and moral flourishing. Once ubiquitous to the point of cliché, such arguments have become distinctly unfashionable against a rising tide of identity politics, counterproductive nationalism, and dumbed-down populism.
Such challenges are not unprecedented. FUSION is inspired by the intellectual journalism of the mid-20th Century, when scholars, writers, and activists also confronted attacks on liberal principles and institutions from both the Left and the Right. Our name is a tribute to Frank S. Meyer, who argued that the twin imperatives of freedom and virtue, rights and obligations are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they constitute a productive tension that drives the unique accomplishments of Western Civilization.
We will not impose any party line on its contributors or their arguments. Taken as a whole, though, FUSION is an attempt to demonstrate both the political salience and the intellectual seriousness of a continuing tradition, involving both practice and theory, that cannot be reduced to shopworn policy proposals or familiar rhetorical gestures. Today’s widespread doubts about the relevance and even possibility of that tradition do not mean that enterprise is doomed from the outset. To the contrary, they remind us why the defense of freedom must be renewed—and revised—in every age.
FUSION is published by the American Institute for Economic Research.
Samuel Goldman
Editor
Samuel Goldman is an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, where he is also executive director of the John L. Loeb, Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom and director of the Politics & Values Program.
His most recent book, After Nationalism: Being American in a Divided Age was published by University of Pennsylvania Press in spring 2021.
Goldman received his Ph.D. from Harvard, and taught at Harvard and Princeton before coming to GW.
In addition to academic work, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.
Jacob Bruggeman
Associate Editor
Jacob Bruggeman is a historian of modern American politics, technology, and expertise. He is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Johns Hopkins University and the National Fellow in Technology and Democracy at the Jefferson Scholars Foundation. His dissertation and first book project, Securing the System: Phone Phreaks, Computer Hackers, and Political Order, 1963–2013, traces hacking’s transformation from a countercultural practice into the widespread expertise employed by American business, government, and digital security.
Bruggeman’s writing has appeared in TIME Magazine, Public Books, and Discourse, as well as in academic venues including Modern American History and Interfaces. He is the co-editor of After Rust: The Post-Industrial American Midwest in Historical Perspective (University of Illinois Press, forthcoming). In addition to his editorial work, he conducts a regular interview series for FUSION.
Samuel Gregg
PUBLISHER
Samuel Gregg is the President and Friedrich Hayek Chair in Economics and Economic History at the American Institute for Economic Research. He has a D.Phil. in moral philosophy and political economy from Oxford University, and an M.A. in political philosophy from the University of Melbourne.
He has written and spoken extensively on questions of political economy, economic history, monetary theory and policy, and natural law theory. He is the author of seventeen books, including On Ordered Liberty (2003), The Commercial Society (2007), Wilhelm Röpke’s Political Economy (2010); Becoming Europe (2013); Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization (2019); The Essential Natural Law (2021); and The Next American Economy: Nation, State and Markets in an Uncertain World (2022). Two of his books have been short-listed for Conservative Book of the Year, and one of his books was short-listed for the 2023 Hayek Prize. Many of his books and over 700 articles and opinion pieces have been translated into a variety of languages.
In 2001, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Member of the Mont Pèlerin Society in 2004. In 2008, he was elected a Member of the Philadelphia Society, and a Member of the Royal Economic Society. He served as President of the Philadelphia Society from 2019-2021. He was made a Distinguished Fellow of the Philadelphia Society in 2023. He is also a Contributor to Law and Liberty and an Affiliate Scholar at the Acton Institute. In May 2024, he was profiled in the Wall Street Journal.
He is the General Editor of Lexington Books’ Studies in Ethics and Economics Series. He also sits on the Academic Advisory Boards of the Institute of Economic Affairs, London; Campion College, Sydney; La Fundación Burke, Madrid; the Instituto Fe y Libertad, Guatemala; and the Friedman-Hayek Center at the Universidad de CEMA, Buenos Aires. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Markets and Morality and Revista Valores en la sociedad industrial. His acceptance speech.
In 2024, he was awarded the prestigious Bradley Prize by The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. This Prize honors scholars and practitioners whose accomplishments reflect the Bradley Foundation’s mission to restore, strengthen, and protect the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism.
