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Which university has the most libertarians?

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Sukrit Sabhlok posted on Sat, Sep 5 2009 9:40 AM

I don't mean in a particular faculty, but across the board in total.

Which PhD granting American university has the most libertarian academics or those sympathetic to libertarianism (not necessarily of the Austrian school)?

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I'd say GMU by quite a big margin, there's Boettke, Roberts, Williams, Buchanan, Boudreaux, Caplan, Cowen, Leeson, Tullock, Tabarrok and Kling in the econ department (I don't know about the other departments) who are all either libertarians or sympathetic towards libertarianism. Others might be Auburn (Long, Garrison, Yeager), Suffolk and WVU.

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Hillsdale, maybe.

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I'd say GMU by quite a big margin, there's Boettke, Roberts, Williams, Buchanan, Boudreaux, Caplan, Cowen, Leeson, Tullock, Tabarrok and Kling in the econ department (I don't know about the other departments) who are all either libertarians or sympathetic towards libertarianism. Others might be Auburn (Long, Garrison, Yeager), Suffolk and WVU.

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Loyola New Orleans has Block, Barnett II, D'amico and Austrian-leaning Levendis. Not too bad either. I'm not sure about NYU these days, I don't think Kirzner teaches there anymore.

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I forgot about Loyola, good call. As for NYU, Rizzo still teaches over there but I'm pretty sure Kirzner has retired. Nonetheless, I there's the NYU Colloquium on Market Institutions and Economic Processes.

I think SJSU might also be worth mentioning Hummel, Stringham and Powell all teach there. U of Arizona also has Gerald Gaus and David Schmidtz in the philosophy department.

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Oh, I forgot that Larry White is now over at GMU and I think Horwitz is a visiting professor over there.

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GilesStratton:

I'd say GMU by quite a big margin, there's Boettke, Roberts, Williams, Buchanan, Boudreaux, Caplan, Cowen, Leeson, Tullock, Tabarrok and Kling in the econ department (I don't know about the other departments) who are all either libertarians or sympathetic towards libertarianism. Others might be Auburn (Long, Garrison, Yeager), Suffolk and WVU.

Everyone, notice how the first person Giles mentions is Peter Boettke. Lol. :p

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Daniel:
Everyone, notice how the first person Giles mentions is Peter Boettke. Lol. :p

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So the University of Chicago and Harvard don't have many free-market people? I know there's a professor of economics at Harvard who keeps calling for the legalization of all drugs.

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Sukrit Sabhlok:

So the University of Chicago and Harvard don't have many free-market people? I know there's a professor of economics at Harvard who keeps calling for the legalization of all drugs.

I know Block has said that both Chicago and Harvard have some free market types. Somebody over at TheAustrianEconomists has noted that a professor at Chicago remarket that U of Chicago is essentialy GMU with more math. So I wouldn't write them off, that said, from what I've heard Chicago is probably less of a free market oriented institute than it used to be.

As for me mentioning Boettke first, it's only natural. Cowen is hardly the exemplar of a libertarian, it's probably somewhat of a dubious claim that Williams, Buchanan and Tullock are libertarians and whilst Caplan is a libertarian, he came after Boettke simply because he's not an Austrian economist (I'm by no means saying that one has to be an Austrian to be a libertarian, just that Boettke came to my mind first for that reason).

On further reflection, Suffolk seems like a good call on my behalf. I remember Powell saying on one of his FEE lectures (the one on Somalia) that he has been "recruiting" libertarians to the PhD programme and that most of the applicants are libertarians.

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this got me thinking

i remember a thread discussing the universities that take no government subsidies.  I think Grove City College is one.  I don't know the others.  Does this entail that they also should be added to this list of free market universities?  Do they have professors that teach such things?

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