It’s no secret that the United States has a less than sound monetary system. Even those who are not well versed in economics are aware of the declining economy and the debt ceiling. Mark Calabria’s recent webinar addressed the future of the U.S. dollar and its role in the global monetary system.
There was a time when the U.S. dollar was the currency of trade, but that time is changing. With other currencies such as the euro gaining power, the dollar is on the decline. The question thus becomes how far will it fall?…
We are proud to announce that we have finalized the full schedule for the 2012 International Students For Liberty Conference. I can safely say that this is by far the best program we have put together yet. We have a strong and diverse list of speakers addressing topics ranging from current policy debates and solutions to Austrian economics and free trade to student organizing and communication training to civil liberties and the police state. This conference will truly have something for everyone.
For the first time we have created a full Program Booklet for the conference. It contains a wealth of information including the schedule, sponsor and exhibitor information, speaker bios, and more. Click here to download the full 2012 ISFLC Program Booklet now.
In response to the July 2011 phone-hacking scandal involving Rupert Murdoch, the UK launched the Leveson Inquiry to investigate media ethics. Throughout the inquiry recommendations have been made on the future of press regulation and governance. One group of campaigners, Turn Your Back on Page 3, has seen this as an opportunity to lobby for the banishment of “Page 3″.
Page 3 refers to a tabloid feature that has been running in the UK since 1970. The term Page 3 is literally derived from the third page of the very popular national tabloid, The Sun, which daily features a large photograph of a topless glamour model. The tradition has now spread to similar tabloid newspapers beyond The Sun.
Over the years, Page 3 has been a target for conservatives and various women’s groups. The Leveson Inquiry merely gave them a platform and cause for hope, along with many other interest groups hoping to impose new regulations on the press. Turn Your Back on Page 3 is lobbying for the banishment of Page 3 on the terms that it is sexist, encouraging women’s insecurities as well as violence and hate towards women in society.
Gabrielle’s brilliant condemnation of the Turn Your Back on Page 3 movement was picked up by Spiked Online. Check it out!
Students For Liberty is excited to announce our first ever Free Speech Week! With the recent success of free speech walls across the world, we will be coordinating a week of activism events to promote and defend the most critical of all liberties.
Free Speech Week will take place from April 1 – 8. SFL is partnering with several great organizations including the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to help provide you the resources you need to make Free Speech Week happen on your campus.
Free Speech Week events will range from building free speech walls to hosting speakers to screening movies and various activism events. Activism kits will be sent at no cost to student groups who request them and project grants of up to $200 will be awarded to approved events.
Check out the full webpage for even more information on ways to participate!
If you have any questions about this event please contact SFL Program Manager, Kelly Jemison, at kjemison@studentsforliberty.org.
SFL president, Alexander McCobin, will be introducing Senator Rand Paul at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference at 4:40pm this Thursday, February 9th. If you are attending CPAC this year, be sure to get to the main hall early for good seats. If you won’t be at CPAC, tune in to C-SPAN to watch the remarks live.
Alexander last spoke at CPAC in 2010 and delivered a 2 minute speech that changed the entire tone of the conference:
After that panel ended, a media frenzy surrounded the topic of gay rights at CPAC, with everyone from Red State to Keith Olbermann to Jon Stewart weighing in. We will be sure to post Alexander’s remarks and a video of the speech as soon as possible.
In addition to Alexander’s speech, SFL will have a booth at CPAC to promote the philosophy of liberty for all individuals at all times. If you are attending CPAC, be sure to encourage your friends to stop by the table to sign up for our list-serve, talk with our volunteers, and enter a raffle for cool SFL swag like our famous bottle openers and even a free registration to the International SFL Conference next weekend (for which the registration deadline has been extended, but we are again filling slots fast)!
We have exciting news regarding the upcomingInternational Students For Liberty Conference. We had originally planned to close registration this past Friday night. However, we have had such high demand for the ISFLC this year and have heard from so many students still wanting to attend that we have made special arrangements with the conference hotel to expand the conference’s capacity. That’s right, we will be keeping registration open as long as we can!
Now students and alumni that register by Friday, February 10th will get a name tag and all the informational emails leading up to the conference. After that, students will still be able to register but we’ll have to make them a name tag when the arrive on site.
However, this extra space is still limited and is filling up fast, so hurry up and tell your friends and groupmates to register now while they still can. If the hotel tells us we can’t accept more attendees, then we can’t accept any more.
Pop culture hasn’t been kind to libertarian ideas. From the “Ayn Rand School for Tots” in The Simpsons to Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation, the depictions can range from mean stereotyping to lovable characters of weird people. However, there has been one consistent depreciation of libertarian ideas. It’s a show about the back country Colorado town of South Park. First airing in 1997, the showSouth Park was created by Matt Stone and Trey Parker and has been consistently libertarian for fifteen seasons. But can the show really be called libertarian?..
SoLib (Society for Individual Liberty) is an independent organization created by a group of recent graduates who are determined to further the cause of freedom. SoLib promotes the principles of liberty and private property in Romania through education and activism. One of SoLib’s major projects is Economy Works, an online educational tool targeted at high school students. Economy Works strives to complement public education and promote ideas that aren’t given attention in the official curriculum….
In December, Pepperdine University, a Church-of-Christ school, denied official recognition to a gay-straight alliance for the fourth time. Recognition would have allowed the group, Reach OUT, to meet in classrooms, advertise on campus, hold events, and utilize funds from the student activities fee collected from students every semester.
Campus Coordinator Alex Cooper, co-president of Reach OUT
Though the decision probably doesn’t surprise most people, Reach OUT explicitly wrote in its constitution that it doesn’t encourage sexual activity. The group primarily aims to provide the campus’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning student population with community and support, as well as sponsor dialogue on LGBTQ issues. It is meant to be a place where everyone—from the celibate gay students who believe homosexuality is wrong to the annual pride parade participants—feel safe and respected….
One of the highlights of the International Students For Liberty Conference is the Annual Awards Presentation. In 2009, Students For Liberty began to recognize outstanding students and student groups that have distinguished themselves in the battle for liberty on campus. That tradition has continued with the awards becoming more competitive every year as more and more students demonstrate their outstanding accomplishments for liberty. Award recipients are chosen based on their hard work, organizational skills, value creation, innovation, and entrepreneurship. You can read about all the finalists for Student of the Year, Event of the Year, and Student Group of the Year here, and be sure to vote for your favorites! You can vote once daily.
Announcing the first batch of sponsored socials for the International Students for Liberty Conference! These socials will give students a chance to network with the partner organizations in attendance as well as relax in a fun environment with their peers.
At the ISFLC, you’ll find numerous organizations working to advance policy goals or political objectives. FEE and IHS have a different focus: helping students learn about the rich intellectual tradition of liberty. Want to be one of them? FEE and IHS would love to meet you in person! Find a FEE or IHS alum and ask them to introduce you to one of our staffers, or drop by the social and introduce yourself. IHS and FEE alums: incentives matter, so here’s a perk for introducing students we ought to know. Dropby our booths before the opening session to collect a free drink ticket for you, as well as extra tickets youcan give to friends.
On Saturday, Alumni For Liberty will be at the Irish Channel for drinks, discussion,and networking. First 100 in the door will receive 2 drink tickets – good for some domestic beers, house wines, and well drinks. After the first 100, each person will get 1 drink ticket until they are gone! Facebook event here: http://www.facebook.com/events/357447924284877/?ref=ts
Stay tuned as there will be more social announcements soon! Remember toregister by FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3 attend the largest gathering of pro-liberty students the world has ever seen!
The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish! - Frederic Bastiat, The Law
Since 1976, the month of February has been promoted as Black History Month in the United States as an attempt to highlight the contributions and experiences of black Americans, long oppressed and exploited in American history. With the development of the “new school” of history in the 1960s, scholars began to explore the different perspectives of minority and subaltern groups in the retelling of the American narrative; the national month-long focus in February is one outgrowth of this new approach. While much work has been done in this field to reconstruct a forgotten history, libertarians by and large have not lent their voices to the dialogue. The libertarian focus on the primacy of the individual tends to obscure our view to collectivist constructions like race, but I would contend that in the discourse on black history this has been a shortfall of libertarianism historically and represents a fruitful area for the development and further refinement of libertarian ideas. Writing at his blog Austro-Athenian Empire, Roderick Long notes that black studies:
“…much like libertarian studies, tend[s] to be enormously insightful in some areas and vastly ignorant in others. (Indeed, much of the knowledge generated by libertarian studies tends to lie in…black studies’ zone of ignorance, just as much of the knowledge generated by…black studies tends to lie in libertarianism’s zone of ignorance.)”….
“For those of you looking to connect with fellow SFL attendees, take a look here! Who is going to SFL on February 17 and still looking for a room?”
Join us tonight at 8PM EST for a webinar discussion led by Mark Calabria over “The Future of the Dollar in the Global Monetary System.”
Wednesday, February 1st at 8pm (Eastern Time)
Topic: “The Future of the Dollar in the Global Monetary System”
Mark Calabria will talk about the current and future role of the Dollar in the Global Monetary System. He will discuss what makes a global currency and evaluate the potential for both the Euro and the Yuan as competitors to the Dollar. In doing so, Calabria will cover the influence of monetary policy on a currency’s value as well as the impact a reserve currency has on domestic industries. An open discussion will touch upon current challenges facing the Euro zone.
Mark A. Calabria is director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. Before joining Cato in 2009, he spent six years as a member of the senior professional staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. In that position, Calabria handled issues related to housing, mortgage finance, economics, banking and insurance for Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-AL). Prior to his service on Capitol Hill, Calabria served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regulatory Affairs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and also held a variety of positions at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, the National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of Realtors. Calabria has also been a Research Associate with the U.S. Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies. He has extensive experience evaluating the impacts of legislative and regulatory proposals on financial and real estate markets, with particular emphasis on how policy changes in Washington affect low and moderate income households. He holds a doctorate in economics from George Mason University.
Students For Liberty is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide a unified, student-driven forum of support for students and student organizations dedicated to liberty.
This tumblr will show case some of the projects, resources, conferences and events that Students For Liberty does for the movement. If you want to utilize any of our resources and/or register for any of our conferences, please visit the Students For Liberty Website
In addition to Alexander’s speech, SFL will have a booth at CPAC to promote the philosophy of liberty for all individuals at all times. If you are attending CPAC, be sure to encourage your friends to stop by the table to sign up for our list-serve, talk with our volunteers, and enter a raffle for cool SFL swag like 
Announcing the first batch of sponsored socials for the 
Since 1976, the month of February has been promoted as Black History Month in the United States as an attempt to highlight the contributions and experiences of black Americans, long oppressed and exploited in American history. With the development of the “new school” of history in the 1960s, scholars began to explore the different perspectives of minority and subaltern groups in the retelling of the American narrative; the national month-long focus in February is one outgrowth of this new approach. While much work has been done in this field to reconstruct a forgotten history, libertarians by and large have not lent their voices to the dialogue. The libertarian focus on the primacy of the individual tends to obscure our view to collectivist constructions like race, but I would contend that in the discourse on black history this has been a shortfall of libertarianism historically and represents a fruitful area for the development and further refinement of libertarian ideas. Writing at his blog 
Wednesday, February 1st at 8pm (Eastern Time)
