Students For Liberty

Students For Liberty (SFL) is an international libertarian non-profit organization with origins in the United States. It is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.

Formed in 2008, SFL had grown to a network of close to 2,000 student organizations worldwide by 2016¹. It hosts LibertyCon, an annual international conference, and various regional conferences². Wolf von Laer became the chief executive officer in 2016³

History

On 24 July 2007, students in an Institute for Humane Studies Koch Summer Fellowship met to discuss challenges faced by classical liberal student organizations. In 2008, Alexander McCobin and Sloane Frost organized a conference for 40 students involved in libertarian student groups. The first Students For Liberty conference was held at Columbia University from 22 to 24 February 2008, with 100 student participants. Afterward they formed Students For Liberty to provide continuing support to student groups⁴.

The group's stated mission is "to educate, develop, and empower the next generation of leaders of liberty"⁵. In a report about vaping, Le Monde and "The Investigative Desk" (Netherlands) described SFL as "a key organization in the Koch system" and pointed out that SFL is a partner in the Atlas Network⁶.

In the news

Internationally, Students For Liberty has been noted by outlets such as Le Figaro⁶, Die Welt⁷, The Guardian⁸, Le Soir⁹, City A.M.¹⁰, 20 Minutos¹¹, CNN¹² and Huffington Post Canada¹³. SFL trained some members of the Movimento Brasil Libre (Free Brazil Movement), which led demonstrations against Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff (who was impeached and removed in August 2016)⁸. A spinoff of SFL, the Consumer Choice Center, was noted for its pro-vaping advocacy through the World Vapers' Alliance⁶.

Programs

Conferences

SFL hosts an annual conference, originally named International Students For Liberty Conference (ISFLC) and now known as LibertyCon. The inaugural conference in 2008 brought 100 students from 42 schools in three countries to New York City. The fourth conference, covered by ReasonTV, was held at George Washington University on 18-20 February 2011, with 500 students participating⁴. This meeting included a taping of Stossel, which aired 31 March, in which John Stossel and Cato Institute Vice President David Boaz spoke¹⁴. The LibertyCon meeting held in Miami on 14-15 October 2022 claimed to have 460 attendees and "over 300,000 online viewers"².

SFL hosts regional conferences on campuses across the world¹⁵. The first European conference was held at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium in November 2011, with attendance of over 200 students from 25 different countries¹⁶. In its 2023 annual report, SFL stated it hosted, organized or sponsored over 2500 events, including special ones such as the Women For Liberty Retreat and the Free Market Environmentalism Regional Conference¹⁷.

Free books

SFL has published or offered as free downloads various books for classical liberal student groups. Among these are The Economics of Freedom: What Your Professor Won't Tell You, The Morality of Capitalism: What Your Professors Won't Tell You, After the Welfare State, Why Liberty: Your Life, Your Choices, Your Future and Peace, Love, & Liberty. The books include essays from authors such as Frédéric Bastiat, John Mackey, Jeffrey Miron, John Stossel, Steven Pinker and Radley Balko, and most were edited by Tom G. Palmer of the Atlas Network¹⁸.

Organizational structure

SFL is a 501(c) organization that supports student groups advocating classical liberalism. SFL is run by some 70 full-time professionals at its headquarters in McLean, Virginia. Direction of the organization comes from Chief Executive Officer Wolf von Laer, the board of directors and a board of advisors. A notable member of the board of directors is former CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey.¹⁹

This article is derived from the English Wikipedia article "Students for Liberty" as of 14 Nov 2024, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.