|Peter Boettke|
The Mont Pelerin Society continues to thrive and encourage research among liberal thinkers in the social sciences and the humanities. Next week MPS will meet for a Special Meeting at the Hoover Institution on the theme "From the Past to the Future".
In September of this year, MPS will have its bi-annual General Meeting in Oslo, Norway. There are two great opportunities for young scholars. First, MPS will conduct its F. A. Hayek essay contest. Winning that contest in the early 1990s was how I attended my first MPS meeting in Cannes, France. The essay contest is open to scholars under the age of 36.
In addition to the essay contest, for the past several years due to the initiative of Ben Powell, MPS has developed a excellent young scholars program. Please consider applying to present a paper as part of this program, the deadline is May 15, 2020.
Hayek concluded his "Intellectuals and Socialism" arguing that:
The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote. Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this had rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost. The intellectual revival of liberalism is already underway in many parts of the world. Will it be in time?
The challenges that the true liberal must confront today are both different and eerily similar to the ones that Hayek confronted in his lifetime, but the sense of urgency is just as strong. These programs are designed to help discover the "liveliest minds" and encourage them to explore in depth "the philosophical foundations of a free society". Please share this with all your friends and contacts throughout the intellectual universe you travel in. We need more voices, new voices, and creative, clever and committed individuals to rise to the challenge Hayek put forth and to ultimately consider joining us in Hayek's 'academy'.
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