Making Freedom ‘Cool’ on College Campuses
Colleges and universities can be lonely places. For the first time in their young lives, students are on their own, away from their parents and families, surrounded by strangers, often in a new town or state.
But for students who believe in free markets, liberty, and individual responsibility, college life poses even greater challenges. Often, such ideas don’t even show up in the curriculum, and these students’ beliefs may be mocked, dismissed, or ignored.
That’s where the Institute for Humane Studies steps in. A nonprofit housed at George Mason University in northern Virginia, IHS links arms with liberty-loving students, faculty, and scholars to bring intellectual diversity and critical thinking back to college campuses — and make sure that students have ample opportunity to learn about America’s founding virtues.
“We’re here to ensure that the ideas of liberty have a place at the table in higher education,” said past IHS president Marty Zupan. “It’s vital that each generation be exposed to the full array of thinking about the role of markets, community, and government in a free society.”
Each year, IHS launches a coast-to-coast search for the brightest and most capable liberty-loving students in colleges and universities. The goal is to satisfy that desire to learn and to find students who want to become effective ambassadors for freedom on their campuses — and beyond.
“A free society depends on individuals understanding and living by the principles of individual liberty and personal responsibility, and on the next generation learning them about,” Zupan said.
A heritage of liberty
Founded in 1961 by a former Cornell University economics professor, IHS is now working with thousands of students a year through its suite of programs and reaching millions online with educational videos at LearnLiberty.org. That mission is particularly important because research shows that many young people form their opinions during their college years. IHS provides vital balance to the skepticism of free enterprise and embrace of big government that so often dominates college campuses.
IHS hosts dozens of seminars and conferences for students on such topics as morality and capitalism, journalism and a free society, and the fundamentals of liberty. For many students, these programs provide a rare opportunity for free exchange of ideas on the principles of freedom. Students are immersed in disciplines such as economics, law, philosophy, history, and public policy as they learn about the foundations of a free and humane society.
The goal of IHS seminars isn’t just to educate students, though. It’s also to help launch students into successful careers in the world of ideas — in academia, journalism, and public policy. The Institute awards more than $1 million annually in scholarships and fellowships to promising students pursuing such careers. And this financial support is backed up with assistance to help liberty-loving students be more effective — personalized mentoring, career development, and networking with other professionals in their field of study.
Profiting from seminars
In North Carolina, nearly 40 IHS alumni now teach in the university system. Across the nation, the institute has helped more than 1,500 aspiring scholars take up faculty positions at schools ranging from Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill to Harvard and Stanford universities.
The Institute also has a passion for supporting full-time faculty and teaching fellows who desire to share the principles of liberty with their graduate and undergraduate students. The Hayek Fund for Faculty — named after the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek — provides up to $5,000 for instructors to facilitate such activities as reading groups, class trips, and debates.
Dr. Bruce Caldwell, an economics professor at Duke University and Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy, was a scholar who profited from IHS support earlier in his career. Due to support from the John William Pope Foundation (which was administered by IHS), Caldwell spent a summer in the early 1990s researching and writing what eventually became Hayek’s Challenge, a book that traced Hayek’s line of thought to earlier free-market economists.
Caldwell said that the support was “very important” for launching his career.
“The institute provides a huge service. It’s a vital mission,” he said. Dr. Caldwell has since published Hayek: A Life, 1899-1950, the first of a two-volume biography that he is writing with Hansjoerg Klausinger.
N.C. support
Since its creation in 1986, the Pope Foundation has played a prominent role in supporting IHS. Art Pope, Chairman of the Pope Foundation Board of Directors, has also served on the IHS Board of Directors since 1988.
The Pope Foundation supports IHS educational efforts by sponsoring a summer seminar hosted in the southeast and providing scholarships for North Carolina students to participate in IHS programs.