ABOUT
Join us for "Freedom in Motion": The Future of Immigration, AI, and Universal Basic Income. The Journal, in partnership with the non-partisan Equal Freedom Institute, presents "Freedom in Motion": The Future of Immigration, AI, and Universal Basic Income. Join us to hear from an esteemed panel of speakers as we explore pressing and interconnected policy challenges of our time. As global migration redefines nations and technological advancement accelerates, we face a critical era in our social and economic future. The event will bring together leading advocates to examine how these three forces—often discussed in isolation—are deeply intertwined.
EVENT PANELISTS
Dr. Chris Boom​
JD, LLM, PHD​
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Immigration Lawyer & Founder of Equal Freedom Institute
Both a practicing lawyer and an active scholar, Chris Boom’s dedication to advancing justice and knowledge led him to found the Equal Freedom Institute. With over 15 years of experience advocating for immigrants, he is the former Chair of the New Orleans Bar Association’s Immigration Law Committee and a current member of the Cornell Law School/Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility’s Global Strategic Litigation Council for Refugees. Following his LLM in transnational law and PhD dissertation on human rights and the rule of law, he also held appointments as a Visiting Scholar in Philosophy and a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Tulane University. Chris’s research has been published in the International Journal of Refugee Law and American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Law Journal, and presented at Cambridge University and the London School of Economics, among other places. Biography courtesy of Chris Boom's profile at the Equal Freedom Institute.
Basic Income Panel
Dr.Karl Widerquist​
PhD, PhD, BA​
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Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar
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Dr. Karl Widerquist a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar with a background as an economist. He specializes in distributive justice—the ethics of who has what. Professor Widerquest writes on many topics including social contract theory, freedom, equality, property rights, and sufficientarianism, but he is best known for his work on Basic Income. Widerquist has published dozens of articles in fields as diverse as economics, philosophy, politics, and anthropology. He also has published eleven books, including Freedom as the Power to Say No, Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, A Critical Discussion of Basic Income Experiments, The Prehistory of Private Property, and Universal Basic Income: Essential Knowledge (preview). He cofounded the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network 1999 and the academic journal Basic Income Studies in 2006. Professor Widerquest appeared on or been quoted by many media outlets including the New York Times, NBC News, 538, Vice, NPR’s On Point, NPR’s Marketplace, PRI’s the World, CNBC, Al-Jazeera, Dissent, Forbes, the Financial Times, Salon, and The Atlantic Monthly, which actually called him “a leader of the worldwide basic income movement.” Biography courtesy of Georgetown Unitersity-Qatar's faculty page.
Natalie Rupp​
MPP, BA​
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Founder, Trans Income Project
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A former economist, Natalie Rupp started the Trans Income Project informally two years ago which has since become a nonprofit. The group has so far been able to give out around $60,000 directly to the trans community in Louisiana. Rupp is originally from Pennsylvania but has called Louisiana home since she was 20. She's lived in New Orleans since around 2014. She also does policy advocacy work, including helping draft a new law that protects sex workers from being arrested by the New Orleans Policy Department if they report crimes committed against them while on the job. The city council passed this law in May. She recently helped write the trans rights section of the United Nation's Universal Periodic Review. Rupp will start at Loyola Law School in the fall. Biography courtesy of Gambit's 2025 40 under 40 article.
AI Panel
Dr. Thomas Mulligan​
PhD, MA, BA​
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Researcher at the RAND Corporation and Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics​​
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Thomas Mulligan, a philosopher by training, is a Visiting Scholar with GISME, and was a faculty fellow at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business for two academic years, from 2016 to 2018. He has taught at Tulane, Brown, and Georgetown and has published in a range of journals, including the Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture, Ethics, Philosophical Studies, The Philosophical Quarterly, and Social Choice and Welfare. He has written a book defending meritocracy, Justice and the Meritocratic State (Routledge, 2018). Tom’s primary research specialities are economic justice and the formal theory of decision-making in groups. He has an enduring interest in meritocracy — its history (Eastern and Western), concept, justifiability, and application. Tom has worked outside of academia in a variety of roles — as a Navy officer; a Central Intelligence Agency case officer; a management consultant, and, most recently, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer of the City of New Orleans. Biography courtesy of Georgetown University's faculty page
Regan Moss
MPH​
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Social and Behavioral Sciences Doctoral Student at Tulane University, Fellow at Newcomb Institute, and Adjunct Professor at Auburn University
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Regan Moss is a PhD student in the Department of Social, Behavioral, + Population Sciences at Tulane University. Her research integrates social epidemiology, feminist theory, and behavioral science to examine how cultural ideas of morality and criminality, social control, and moral policing surrounding motherhood and womanhood shape maternal and reproductive health outcomes, identities, and cultural understandings/meaning-making of women/mothers in relation to health. Her work addresses the social determinants of reproductive and maternal health through matricentric and community-based participatory frameworks. For instance, her 2024 Emerging Scholars Grant by the Society of Family Planning identifies ways to increase access to abortion care for patients who are incarcerated. Moss is an affiliated researcher with the Mary Amelia Center for Women's Health Equity Research, the Cross-Center Collaborative of Justice-Involved Women and Children, the Khora Lab (Columbia University) and Tulane's Center of Excellence in Maternal-Child Health. She is a fellow with Abortion in America and the Newcomb Institute/LA MCH Coalition. She also lead Tulane's site for the cross-center collaborative. Moss is an instructor at Tulane where she teaches a reproductive health course in the college in prison program. She is an adjunct professor at Auburn where she teaches courses on public health, care work, and motherhood. Bio courtesy of Regan Moss's LinkedIn Profile.
Immigrant Rights Panel
Aubrial harrington
BA, MA​
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​Faculty Associate at the TCLAS School of Historical Philosophical and Religious Studies
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Aubrial Harrington is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Arizona State University. Her research is grounded in applied ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE). She is particularly interested in how we draw lines between people, morally, politically, and socially, and what those boundaries reveal about power, justice, and exclusion.
Her dissertation focuses on the moral and political dimensions of immigration and border theory. Drawing on border studies, Latinx philosophy, and immigration ethics, she examines four distinct issues related to immigration in the United States and the marginalization of undocumented Latina immigrants. Her work aims to reframe discussions of immigration by centering immigrant positionality and interrogating the structure of borders as forms of political architecture. Harrington’s ongoing research also includes work in animal ethics, environmental ethics, the ethics of political discourse, and algocracy (the governance of society through algorithms). Across these areas, she is especially attentive to the ethical and political implications of structural systems. Originally from Northern Arizona, Harrington is passionate about public philosophy and teaching. She has developed and taught courses on politics and ethics, environmental ethics, and business ethics. Whether in the classroom or through community engagement, she is dedicated to making philosophical reflection relevant to everyday life and to interrogate complex social issues. Biography courtesy of ASU faculty page.
Dr. Nathan P. Goodman
BS, PhD​
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Senior Fellow at the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
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Dr. Nathan P. Goodman is a Senior Fellow at the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Economics at New York University, where he was affiliated with the Program on the Foundations of the Market Economy. Dr. Goodman earned his PhD in economics at George Mason University, where Ihe was a PhD fellow with the Mercatus Center and a Graduate Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. His research broadly focuses on political economy, public choice, market process economics, New Institutional Economics, and defense economics. Dr. Goodman analyzes how alternative institutional arrangements shape the provision of security. He is especially interested in border militarization and the political economy of immigration policy. Biography courtesy of Nathan P. Goodman's professional page.