Students are no longer spectators of the liberty movement – they are helping lead it.
Students For Liberty (SFL) is a nonprofit organization “whose mission is to provide a unified, student-driven forum of support for students and student organizations dedicated to liberty.” SFL just released its 2010-11 Midyear Report (PDF version available here), which provides unique insight into the growth of pro-liberty ideas among students around the world.
Over the last semester alone SFL:
- Grew its student group network from 250 to 429 groups around the world
- Hosted nine regional conferences on campuses across the United States
- Co-sponsored the European Libertarian Student Summit and organized the first European Liberty Conference, which had over 100 attendees
- Provided free literature to over 115 student groups throughout North America
Reason has both covered, and collaborated with, the explosive growth of the student liberty movement.
Reason TV’s Tim Cavanaugh recently sat down with Michelle Fields, an undergraduate at Pepperdine University and SFL’s Los Angeles Campus Coordinator:
Last spring, Reason Magazine’s Michael Moynihan and Radley Balko spoke on a panel entitled “The Greatest Threats to Liberty Today” at SFL’s 2nd Annual International Students For Liberty Conference (see the video of Moynihan’s address here and Balko’s address here.)
SFL’s success coincides with a recent poll that I wrote about yesterday, which found that 74% of Canadians aged 18-29 believe that the government should rely more on the private sector to accomplish infrastructure and public service goals. It will be interesting to see the impact that a younger liberty-oriented generation will have on public policy moving forward.
Harris Kenny is a research assistant at Reason Foundation