From the Archives: Hoyas for Liberty, promoting libertarian ideas at Georgetown University

Hoyas for Liberty, promoting libertarian ideas at Georgetown University
September 25, 2010 12:02 AM MST

While Georgetown University lacks the reputation of producing libertarian scholars and activists that adheres, for instance, to nearby George Mason University in Virginia, its list of liberty-oriented alumni is not insubstantial.

That list includes 2008 Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr; Cato Institute vice president Gene Healy; syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock; Goldwater Institute president Darcy Olsen; and investment advisor Doug Casey, who graduated from Georgetown in 1968 with classmate Bill Clinton. In addition, the president and co-founder of Students for Liberty, Alexander McCobin, is currently a doctoral student in philosophy at Georgetown.

‘Community for pro-liberty students’

When Hoyas for Liberty hosted a lecture by Muslim libertarian scholar Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad on September 11, the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner spoke with the group’s president, Preston Mui, about libertarians on campus at the oldest Catholic university in the United States.

Mui, a double-major in political economy and mathematics, explained that Hoyas for Liberty was begun during the last academic year but just received official university recognition this year. The group’s advisor is business school professor Phillip Swagel, who served in the George W. Bush administration as assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy.

“The goal of Hoyas for Liberty,” said Mui, “is to create a community for pro-liberty students and connect them with the rest of the D.C. and national pro-liberty community.”

Lectures and films
To do this, the group sponsors lectures for students with speakers who “talk about the ideas of liberty.”

Past speakers have included Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson and Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Matthew Fogg of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, who addressed “racism and the drug war, on 4/20.” Next month, he said, “we’re going to have Lloyd Cohen, a professor at GMU law [school], speaking on kidney markets.”

Hoyas for Liberty also hosts movie screenings. The next film scheduled, on September 28, is the award-winning documentary, The Lottery, about the failures of the public school system and the attempts by parents to escape it. Other films come from the Moving Picture Institute catalog.

Outreach plans

Robert Kaminski, Preston Mui, and Stephen Wooten

The group has also reached out to other student organizations, such as cosponsoring a panel discussion on gay marriage last spring with GU Pride, “the LGBTQ student organization on campus,” and inviting a libertarian speaker to participate on the panel.

Outreach like that is part of Hoyas for Liberty’s plan to improve reception on a campus best known for conventional views about politics and government.

“We’re testing the waters” now, said Mui. “We really don’t know how we’ll be received but I think as long as we stay respectful and above the fray and really [take] the high ground, we’ll do OK. We plan on reaching out to other student groups and I think that will really help.”

Hoyas for Liberty is also cooperating with the Liberty Society at George Washington University, which helped bring Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad to campus, and “going to things like the Students for Liberty conferences” and to social events in the D.C. area for libertarian students, such as monthly student-focused lectures and receptions at the Cato Institute.

For maximum accessibility, Hoyas for Liberty has both a Facebook page and a web site.

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on September 25, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: On 9/11, Muslim libertarian scholar Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad addresses religious freedom at Georgetown U

On 9/11, Muslim libertarian scholar Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad addresses religious freedom at Georgetown U
September 11, 2010 10:29 PM MST

At the invitation of Hoyas for Liberty, a libertarian student group at Georgetown University, Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad made a presentation on September 11, 2010, on the topic “Freedom of Religion and Speech: We can, but should we?”

Just before he took to the lectern, Dr. Ahmad, the president of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, spoke briefly with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about the topic he was to address and the mission of his Maryland-based organization.

Sensitive to Others

The topic, he said, poses “the question that, because America is unique in allowing any religion and any kind of speech, does that mean that we should always employ, should we not be sensitive to the feelings of others?”

He would also, he continued, “try to answer that question with regard to a number of topical issues going on right now.”

Ahmad used his presentation to “show how attempts to draw parallels in applying this question between, for example, the Manhattan Islamic center on the one hand and the burning of Qurans on the other, [are] rather misguided.”

'A provocative act'
Why is this? Because, he explained, “certainly the burning of Qurans” – such as the action threatened by Florida Pastor Terry Jones – “is a provocative act, deliberately intended to insult another people, whereas the building of the Islamic center in New York has as its intention to adopt the model of the Jewish community center there, which is to build a bridge between a minority community and the larger society.”

As for the Minaret of Freedom Institute, Ahmad noted that it “was founded in 1993 with a fourfold mission: to counter the distortions about Islam, to show the origin of certain modern values that came out of the Islamic civilization, to educate both Muslims and non-Muslims on the importance of liberty and free markets, and to advance the status of Muslims (whether they live in the east or the west).”

To advance this mission, he said, “we write papers for refereed academic journals, we do op-ed pieces for the mass press, we have educational programs, and we have a web site and a blog. On our web site, minaret.org, you’ll find virtually all our academic papers and links to about half of our op-ed pieces.”

Answering Skeptics

Acknowledging that there might be some skeptics who will say that as admirable as the mission of the Minaret of Freedom is, it’s an outlier and it’s not really representative of Islamic culture, politics, or economics, Ahmad said he would “first grant them a point in that, in the degree to which we are passionately devoted to the cause of liberty we are not in the mainstream, in the same way that the libertarian movement in America is not the mainstream of America.”

With that said, however, he added that, “if you look at the mainstream of the Muslim society, you will find that it is very compatible with our views, they’re just not as consistent as we are, in the same way as American society is very inclined towards liberty but just not consistent about it.”

Ahmad pointed out that he and his colleagues at the Minaret of Freedom Institute do not look for easy answers.

“The issues we deal with, we deal with in a nuanced manner,” he said. “We do not try to make things simple, bipolar, yes-or-no.”

Keeping that in mind, he concluded, he would encourage Examiner.com readers “to go to our web site and get an opportunity to study the nuances.”


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on September 11, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.