Allen Mendenhall

The Price of Academia: Unmasking the Hidden Costs

Associate Dean and Grady Rosier Professor in the Sorrell College of Business at Troy University, where he directs the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy. His books include Literature and Liberty (2014), Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Pragmatism, and the Jurisprudence of Agon (2017), Of Bees and Boys: Lines from a Southern Lawyer (2017), The Southern Philosopher: Collected Essays of John William Corrington (2017), Writers on Writing: Conversations with Allen Mendenhall (2019), The Three Ps of Liberty (2020), Shouting Softly: Essays on Law, Literature, and Culture (2021), A Glooming Peace this Morning (2023, a novel), and Controversies Among Conservatives: Conversations on Conservatism, Vol II (2023) (edited with Marcus Witcher and Kevin Hughes). In 2023, Mendenhall received the inaugural Freedom and Opportunity Academic Prize from the Heritage Foundation and was an AmPhil Fundraising Fellow with the Center for Civil Society at American Philanthropic. In 2024, he became a Club for Growth Foundation Fellow and a Lincoln Fellow with the Claremont Institute for the Study of
Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. His television show, “Success Stories,” airs on local television throughout Alabama, and his segment “Word to the Wise” appears on Troy Public Radio (WTSU 89.9, WRWA 88.7, WTJB 91.7).

Mendenhall holds a B.A. in English from Furman University, M.A. in English from West Virginia University, J.D. from West Virginia University College of Law, LL.M. from Temple University Beasley School of Law, and Ph.D. in English from Auburn University. Before joining Troy University, he was Associate Dean and Founding Executive Director of the Blackstone & Burke Center for Law & Liberty at Faulkner University Thomas Goode Jones School of Law in Montgomery, Alabama. He edited Southern Literary Review for over a decade and was a visiting scholar at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), an adjunct legal associate at the Cato Institute, a Mises Emerging Scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada, an associate of the Abbeville Institute, a Humane Studies Fellow with the Institute for Humane Studies, a staff attorney for Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the Supreme Court of Alabama, and Assistant Attorney General in the State of Alabama Office of Attorney General Luther Strange. Is an elected member and former trustee of the Philadelphia Society, a former trustee of AIER, an associated scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a policy adviser for the Heartland Institute, former president of the Alabama Association of Scholars, president of the Montgomery Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society, and Chairman of the Board of Managers of the Alabama Center for Law & Liberty.

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