Students for Liberty: A Deep Dive into the Liberty Movement

Students for Liberty (SFL) stands as a prominent force in the modern liberty movement, particularly among young people. It operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with the goal of providing resources and support to students interested in liberty. SFL serves as an umbrella organization for a growing number of affiliated student groups across the world with over 1,000 key coordinators across all inhabitable continents.

The Student Liberty Movement: A Generational Approach

Understanding the Student Liberty Movement requires considering generational shifts and their influence on its dynamics. This movement encompasses both "Big L" libertarians, who engage in electoral politics, and "little l" libertarians, who focus on education and discursive change. The latter group constitutes the primary focus.

Second-Wave Libertarianism

Since 2012, SFL president McCobin has publicly discussed the notion of a "second-wave libertarianism," which explicitly borrows language from the women’s movement. This approach takes a uniquely "big-tent" approach. McCobin states, “No single political party is enough. What we need is for every political party to shift more towards the philosophy of libertarianism." While allegiance to the fundamentals of libertarianism remains, strategies for effecting social change have largely shifted, with younger members focused more on discursive change than the electoral politics embraced by previous generations.

Key Strategies of the First Wave

McCobin describes “building Libertarian institutions and ideas” as one of the major strategies employed by the first wave. By the end of the 20th Century, leaders had emerged and founded organizations that today are the backbone of the libertarian movement:

Public Policy: The Cato Institute, Reason Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and many other libertarian think tanks.
Education: The Institute for Humane Studies and Foundation for Economic Education.
Political Groups: FreedomWorks, the Libertarian Party, and various libertarian caucuses within other political parties.

Core Beliefs and Values

Students for Liberty embraces the diversity of justifications for liberty and encourages debate and discourse on the differing philosophies that underlie liberty. Although SFL does not dictate the foundations upon which individuals justify their belief in liberty, there are some common causes.

Individual Freedom and Economic Liberty

The Liberty Movement, in general, encompasses anyone interested in furthering the causes of individual and economic liberty, regardless of political affiliation. SFL maintains the broader mission of "advancing liberty," a concept most often used to describe protecting individual freedoms but which can stand in for a wide array of causes.

Fiscal Responsibility and Minimal State Involvement

With influences running the gamut from Ayn Rand to Malcolm X, the Student Liberty Movement comprises a range of subcultures, each defined around particular tastes and interests, yet connected to each other through a set of common causes such as fiscal responsibility and minimal state involvement.

Challenging the Status Quo

SFL provides a large-scale platform for education about blockchain, the terrible consequences of drug prohibition, the essence of freedom of speech, and the Austrian school of economics. The organization leaflets, discusses for hours, writes articles, appears on TV, and marches alongside those who also defend freedom. They don’t isolate themselves in their echo-chamber, but debate and challenge the status quo.

Activities and Initiatives

Students for Liberty and Young Americans for Liberty, FIRE, and many more organizations provide excellent resources to aid student groups in their fight for free speech.

Free Speech Advocacy

The topic of free speech on college campuses has become an incredibly heated issue. Many liberty lovers believe it is their duty to defend their rights to free speech. On campuses like The Ohio State University, YAL groups have chosen to fight for free speech via implementing a free speech statement.

Read also: Enrollment at Notre Dame

Developing a Free Speech Statement

A free speech statement gives validation to your cause rather than simply stating that you support free speech. The free speech statement lays out the specific role that a University has in governing free speech and emphasizes its limitations. A petition for the free speech statement can be created, something students can sign to show they supported document.

Gaining Support

The most effective way to get sign-ups for a free speech statement is to do an activism event. A free speech ball attracts a lot of students that otherwise would not be interested in interacting with liberty-minded groups. Almost every student that signed the ball wanted to sign the petition. Creating a coalition of student organizations to co-sign your free speech statement is far more persuasive to student administrators than only your YAL group.

Engaging Student Government

Present your free speech statement to your student government by greatly emphasizing the student signatures and club co-signatures that you’ve gathered. If the student government passes your free speech statement, you can then contact FIRE to write out the exact wording that needs to be revised in order to adhere to the constitution.

Event Promotion Strategies

Hard promotion of events should be heavily focused on a few days leading up to the event. Always do a follow up the day of the event to make sure they’re still going to attend. College students have very short attention spans so make sure to watch the movie to make sure it’s interesting enough to keep people’s attention.

Five Steps to Event Promotion

Target Your Inner Circle: Your YAL chapter and college friends are the most likely to attend the event, so ensure you get them signed up first. When they register for the event, ask them if they have any friends that would be interested in attending.
Reach Out to Student Organizations: Student organizations is a key area for your promotion process and it can be very successful if you know the club officers personally. Tailor your elevator pitch to each student organization.
Personal Messaging: Personally messaging people is very effective to get people registered compared to posting a status where only a very small margin of people will click the link register. Make your message sound personal and utilize copy/paste while only changing the name in order to save time.
Social Media and Flyers: Post on social media throughout your promotional process but the final 2-3 days are the most crucial to get sign-ups for your event. It is best to go into academic buildings and walk up to students directly with a flyer and elevator pitch for your event.
Reminders: Make sure to collect the phone numbers of the registrants in order to have a direct method to send a reminder.

Utilizing Participatory Cultures

Members of the Liberty Movement are engaged with participatory cultures and involved in a variety of creative pursuits. YouTube houses a variety of creative content produced by young libertarians, much of which seeks to make the work of economic and political theorists understandable and enjoyable.

Read also: Movies for Student Success

Bridging Fandom and Politics

The creative productions of young artists/theory fans like Electra and other YouTube stars have helped bridge the gap between fandom and politics for a new generation of libertarians. The libertarian fandom described here is highly participatory in nature, and the contribution of young people’s digital media practices to that ethos is crucial. Given young libertarians’ distrust of governmental institutions, it makes sense that their approach to education would emphasize informal, often self-motivated, learning rather than more formalized instruction, and that they would assume the authority to share insights about theory.

Counterarguments and Criticisms

Students for Liberty is not without its critics. Some view the organization's motto of "Peace, Love and Liberty" as toothless. Others criticize its association with figures like Hans-Hermann Hoppe. It's important to consider these criticisms when evaluating the organization's impact and influence.

The Importance of Individual Action

We're constantly told that without government intervention, people won't help each other. That charity needs to be forced through taxation. That community requires bureaucratic coordination. But the reality is exactly the opposite. When people are free to act, they do remarkable things.

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