Alexander McCobin on Students For Liberty

Alexander McCobin is the president and cofounder of Students For Liberty (SFL), an organization whose mission is to provide a worldwide, unified, student-driven forum for students dedicated to liberty. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. McCobin about SFL, its achievements to date, and its future. —Robert Begley

Robert Begley: Thank you for taking time to discuss Students For Liberty with me. I know TOS’s readers will be interested to hear about SFL’s remarkable history, growth, and goals. To begin, how would you describe SFL’s general philosophy and approach to advocating liberty?

Alexander McCobin: Thank you for inviting me, Robert.

That’s a big question that I could answer a lot of ways. But I think I can best summarize it this way. I believe there are two things that change the world: ideas and people. Ideas provide the framework through which we understand and interact with the world. People actually create the world we live in.

The liberty movement has the right ideas. To be sure, there is more work to be done on the philosophy of liberty, and there are debates to be had about the justifications for and policy applications of the principles of liberty. But the broad philosophy in favor of respecting the freedoms of all people in all areas of their lives is supported by mountains of literature and analytical justification, and ample empirical evidence from the past two centuries shows that freer societies are more prosperous for far more people than are less free societies. For generations, the liberty movement has invested heavily in generating the ideas and principles of liberty. What the liberty movement has not invested in nearly enough are people to advocate and implement those ideas. There have been some great leaders and advocates of liberty, to be sure—but not enough, especially when compared to the incredibly high levels of investment by statists in people to advocate and implement statist ideas.

Given this background, SFL’s strategy is largely to focus on people. First, we seek to educate as many young people as possible about the principles of liberty. Second, we provide leadership training to those young people who are committed to liberty and who want to become leaders in the liberty movement. Third, we provide them with the infrastructure, resources, and support to advance liberty in the best ways they can.

Begley: How did SFL get started? How large is the organization today, in terms of students, chapters, and countries? And what accounts for its rapid expansion?

McCobin: I was first introduced to these ideas in ninth grade when my father gave me a copy of Atlas Shrugged for my birthday. After I finished that, and throughout the remainder of high school, I read as much as I could on Objectivism and libertarianism. By the time I went off to college in 2004, I was a dedicated libertarian, and thought, too optimistically, that I would be surrounded by other libertarians who would help me learn more and become a better advocate of the ideas.

But, for the first two years, I didn’t meet a single person who thought the way I did. I began to feel so isolated and alone that I thought to myself, “Alexander, if you’re the only person who thinks this way, you must be crazy. Maybe you should just give up and become a socialist—life would be so much easier.” Fortunately, instead I started a new group on campus, the Penn Libertarians. Within a year, we had more than two hundred members on our listserv. Students and even professors came out of the woodwork to join our discussions and efforts, and I realized there had always been libertarians on campus; what we needed was a group to bring us together.

Then, the summer before my senior year, I interned at the Reason Foundation in Washington, D.C., and met libertarian students from other schools who were running their own pro-liberty groups. I had never met libertarian students from other schools, so I decided to organize a roundtable discussion on best practices for student organizing, so we could all learn from each other. A dozen students showed up to that event, and the conversation was so dynamic with everyone learning so much, that, at the end, I asked the group, what would you all think about keeping this going with a thirty-person roundtable in the Northeast during the school year? By the time that follow-up event came around in February 2008, we had drawn one hundred students from forty-two schools to the first Students For Liberty Conference. That’s when we realized there was a demand for something bigger than a one-time conference. At the end of the weekend, we announced the formation of Students For Liberty as a nonprofit organization.

Today, SFL has more than fourteen hundred groups in our network. This school year, we are training more than seven hundred student leaders, distributing more than 500,000 resources to students for free, and organizing fifty conferences for an expected ten thousand-plus attendees. Our network is global with active leadership teams, conferences, and other events on every inhabited continent in the world. If you had told me a decade ago that I would be part of an organization like this, I would have thought you were crazier than I was at the time.

I think there are two reasons for SFL’s rapid growth. The first is that this is the libertarian generation. Millennials have grown up socially tolerant, fiscally responsible, and skeptical of the big-government presidential administrations of both the Republicans and Democrats. SFL is tapping into the natural inclinations of this generation and providing a unique opportunity for them to learn more about the principles of liberty and to be effective advocates of the ideas.

The second is SFL’s leadership. From the beginning, we have invested heavily in identifying, training, and supporting the best people we can find, and that has been critical. In fact, this is one of the biggest lessons we have taken away over the years: Whether you are talking about a for-profit company, a nonprofit organization, or a student group, the success or failure of the organization depends entirely upon the people involved. We have never taken SFL’s success as a given, but we have always believed in the future of the organization and this movement, and that has driven SFL’s rapid growth.

Begley: What are some key programs currently underway within the organization? What are its major goals moving forward? And what’s your vision for the organization in the coming years and decades?

McCobin: There are a few key programs to SFL right now. First are our leadership training programs, including our North American Campus Coordinator Program, our European Local Coordinator Program, and the various regional executive boards around the world. We are training more than seven hundred student leaders—more than a 50 percent increase from the 468 last year—to build up the student movement for liberty in their areas.

Second are our conferences. Twenty-one are being run in the United States and Canada this fall (http://studentsforliberty.org/regional-conferences/), and the eighth Annual International Students For Liberty Conference is taking place February 13–15, 2015, in Washington, D.C. (www.isflc.org). I encourage everyone who reads this to come out and see SFL in action.

Third, our resources are now available for any student or alumni to easily access (see www.studentsforliberty.org/store).

Fourth, we are investing a lot more in Alumni For Liberty, to support individuals who are passionate about liberty and no longer in school.

Our major goals moving forward are to increase the quality and quantity of our existing programs’ activities and to support SFL’s leaders and alumni in developing new and meaningful projects to advance liberty. We have a model that works for organizing and supporting students, and we aim constantly to improve that model, to increase the number of students we reach, and to train them to be effective advocates of liberty. We want also to expand and improve Alumni For Liberty and do more to support young people in their efforts to advance liberty after they graduate and as they begin their professional lives. If we do this effectively, I think SFL has unlimited potential to grow and help make the world a freer, more prosperous place.

Begley: How does SFL support its various local chapters, and what’s involved in starting new chapters?

McCobin: Technically, SFL doesn’t have chapters. We work with any student group that is pro-liberty, whether they call themselves Students For Liberty, Young Americans for Liberty, an Objectivist club, an Austrian Economics club, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, or whatever. This is part of our big-tent approach to organizing, and it is one of our greatest strengths.

If someone wants to start a group, we have a place on our website for them to let us know. We will then connect the student with the local SFL leader who will walk him through the ten-step process for starting a group and help him find others to help organize events, follow up with students on campus, and create a sustainable club. For this process, SFL provides many resources ranging from free books to recruitment kits to a virtual speakers bureau, and a lot of materials on effective campus leadership techniques.

Begley: I understand that SFL puts a strong emphasis on leadership. What principles of leadership does the organization advocate and teach? And how would you say these principles differ from those of other college-based, liberty-oriented organizations?

McCobin: Leadership training is at the core of everything SFL does. We put a lot into this: We have a hundred-page leadership-training handbook; we spend months walking students through an initial leadership training curriculum; we continue educating our leaders throughout their time with SFL; and we constantly strive to learn and communicate more-effective leadership principles and methods.

At its core, though, the leadership principle that defines SFL’s approach is empowerment. We don’t limit the responsibilities of young people because “they can’t handle it.” We want to empower young people to realize that they can change the world, and we want to provide them with the training, resources, and infrastructure to help them do that. For a longer explanation of this aspect of SFL, I recommend my article “A Theory of Empowerment” at SFL’s website, http://studentsforliberty.org/blog/2012/04/20/sfls-philosophy-a-theory-of-empowerment/.

Begley: Has SFL played a role in the recent student demonstrations in Hong Kong? And what plans do you have for activism there or in mainland China in the future?

McCobin: We have not had a direct role in the student demonstrations in Hong Kong. We have been very supportive of those students by trying to raise awareness of what is going on, to garner greater international interest in what has been happening. But mainland China and Hong Kong have been difficult areas for us to break into. It is so dangerous to promote liberty there and far more difficult to organize—even just to organize and talk about ideas—without being shut down by the government. The only parts of the world where we do not have an active leadership team on the ground are East Asia, Russia, and the Middle East. Although there’s plenty for us to do in supporting students across the rest of the world, I’m optimistic that we will find leaders and start to actively support student movements in these areas in the near future.

Begley: How can people support SFL? And if they want to support specific programs but not others, is that possible?

McCobin: Well, the most obvious way would be to donate to Students For Liberty (www.studentsforliberty.org/donate). Every donation goes a long way, from the $25 donation that helps us send twenty-five books to a student group to the $2,500 donation that sponsors a campus coordinator who will work with five to ten groups in her area for a full year. We are happy to direct donations toward a particular program. I’m happy to discuss that with anyone who is interested. Feel free to reach me at amccobin@studentsforliberty.org.

Begley: What’s the best way for people to keep abreast of SFL’s activities?

McCobin: The best way is to make a donation to start receiving SFL’s weekly donor updates on what’s going on. But for anyone who wants just to learn more about SFL, sign up for our newsletter at http://studentsforliberty.org/get-updates.

About Robert Begley

Robert Begley is the Founder and President of the New York Heroes Society. He was the host and producer of the Manhattan cable TV program The Voice of Reason. His own writings and speeches can be found on his website, Robert.Begley.com.

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