Student of the Year
- Anna Shnaidman — Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel)
- Cory Massimino — Seminole State College (USA)
- Julio Lins – Universidade do Estado do Amazonas (Brazil)
Honorable mentions: Anna Klvanova (CEVRO Prague – Czech Republic), Angel Lauver (University of Florida – USA), Brandon Clements (University of Oregon – USA), Kevin Suarez (De Anza College, USA), Sam Dunkovich (University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, USA)
Event of the Year
- El Toborochi y la Libertad — Universidad Santa Cruz (Bolivia)
- Gustavo Franco lecture — DCE Ibmec (Brazil)
- Liberal Youth Seminar (Hong Kong)
Student Group of the Year
Student of the Year
Anna Shnaidman — Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Anna is a member of the Israeli Freedom Movement and is one of the co-founders of the first Israeli Libertarian party and Students For Liberty – Israel. Her student group has organized several popular events, including a debate on the decriminalization of prostitution (which is nominated for Event of the Year). Anna is an MA student in Political Communication at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Her research focuses on the ways in which the mass media is biased against big entrepreneurs and tycoons, and on public opinions towards socio-economic issues. She graduated with an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in Film & TV from the Tel Aviv University in 2008.
Cory Massimino — Seminole State College (USA)
This year, Cory took initiative with SFL’s virtual reading group program and hosted three successful reading groups on various libertarian topics. He brought together prominent libertarian figures and students from around the world to study liberty through reading and discussion, and he plans to continue the program this spring with many more reading groups. Cory revived SFL’s liberty.me podcast this year, SFLive, allowing SFL students to voice their opinions on important issues. The conversations had on these podcasts speak to the diversity and intelligence of SFL’s student community. In addition to reading groups and podcasts, Cory helped rejuvenate SFL’s academic programs by putting libertarian virtual speakers in touch with pro-liberty student groups around the world. Cory has contributed countless times to the SFL blog and as a Young Voices Advocate he has been featured in prominent publications, such as The Guardian, discussing important libertarian issues like police brutality and immigration. In the fall as a senior CC, Cory put together numerous resources for students interested in left-libertarianism, which are now available on SFL’s website. In November, he spoke on a panel at SFL’s Oklahoma Regional Conference about the philosophical basis for prison abolition.
Fernando Moreno — Universidad Santa María (Ecuador)
Fernando started the year collaborating with Estudiantes por la Libertad activities in Ecuador. As a Local Coordinator, he helped in the organization of various events, including EPL Ecuador’s first-ever Regional Conference in May for 200 students. Meanwhile, he assisted in several editing tasks for the EsLibertad Blog. In July, he assumed new roles as EsLibertad Executive Board member, Blog Content Manager and Regional Director for Chile. During his first six months as EsLibertad Blog Content Manager, Fernando managed to raise the regional blog’s visibility and traffic through several content-related strategies. Pageviews rose by 50% in the second half of 2015, reaching the 125,000 pageviews milestone in December. Fernando structured and devised the National Campus Coordinator program that gives a sense of membership and various incentives for actives members of EsLibertad that aren’t Local Coordinators yet, strengthening the network and ensuring new future Local Coordinators. This initiative has been doubled in several countries of Latin America successfully.
Julio Lins — Universidade do Estado do Amazonas (Brazil)
Julio Lins is the 19 year-old co-founder of the Ajuricaba Club, the largest libertarian student group of the northern region of Brazil, a Senior Local Coordinator of BSFL and a leader of the “Vem Pra Rua” movement, that alongside with the Free Brazil Movement is taking libertarianism into the streets of Brazil to change the country. The “Vem Pra Rua” or Come to the Streets in English, is one of the largest pro-liberty anti-government movements of Brazil and Julio became its spokesperson.
Julio participated in all of the protests against the Labour Party government and helped taking millions into the streets of Brazil, always with a libertarian message. Julio grew inside the BSFL community in Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon, and is now taking action against an authoritarian government and may directly help to impeach president Dilma Rousseff.
Louis Lo — University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong)
Louis Lo is the founder of SFL’s Hong Kong chapter — the first libertarian student group in the Chinese special economic zone’s history. Since its founding, Louis and his group stood in solidarity with Joshua Wong in the 2014 free speech protests. His club has held numerous seminars on libertarian thoughts and Objectivism. Louis has raised over $10,000 USD for SFL – Hong Kong and has largely built the chapter from scratch with little resources from SFL’s international headquarters.
Louis was selected as the student representative of the Lion Rock Institute to speak at occasions of significance such as Hong Kong’s legislative council, EFN Asia Liberal Conference (2014), Asia Liberty Forum at Nepal (2015). He was also nominated to an internship position at the Acton Institute in Michigan, United States, in summer 2014. He regularly writes in local newspaper about free market ideas.
Yeonmi Park — Columbia University (USA)
Yeonmi Park is a North Korean defector and human rights activist who escaped to China in 2007 and settled in South Korea in 2009. She came from an educated, politically connected family that turned to black market trading during North Korea’s economic collapse in the 1990s. After her father was sent to a labor camp for smuggling, her family faced starvation. They fled to China, where Yeonmi and her mother fell into the hands of human traffickers before escaping to Mongolia. She now advocates for victims of trafficking and works to promote human rights in North Korea and around the globe.
Park rose to global prominence after she delivered a speech at the One Young World 2014 Summit in Dublin, Ireland — an annual summit that gathers young people from around the world to develop solutions to global problems. Her speech, about her experience escaping from North Korea, received more than 2 million views on YouTube. Her memoir In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom was published in September 2015.
Event of the Year
In December 2015, EPL Bolivia held “El Toborochi y la Libertad” celebrating the third anniversary of the organization. The event was at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce of Santa Cruz, Bolivia (CAINCO), and had 532 attendees, television press, newspapers and recognized Bolivian authorities.
One of the speakers, Carlos Valverde, is one of the most famous journalists in the country and an important critic of the authoritarianism in recent years. While Valverde does not often make public appearances, he accepted EPL’s invitation anyways. The group gave him the Ama-gi Life Achievement Award for his dedication to freedom.
Debate to Decriminalize Prostitution — Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel)
The libertarian student group Liber Huji at Hebrew University organized a debate on whether to decriminalize prostitution last year. Two teams of two debaters discussed the pros and cons of bringing the oldest profession in the world out of the shadows. Each side featured a former prostitute to testify about the dangers of the profession. While both sides were given equal time, the consensus among the audience after the debate seemed to be that prostitution would be safer if legalized.
Gustavo Franco lecture — DCE Ibmec (Brazil)
Débora Góis Torres (DCE Ibmec) organized an event hosting Gustavo Franco, a former president of the Central Bank of Brazil and the creator of the “Plano Real” that stabilized the Brazilian economy in the 1990s. Franco is considered the most influential economist in Brazil today. He spoke at the Ibmec Business School, a rare pro-market university in Brazil and a valued partner of BSFL, about economic freedom and the importance of the ideas of liberty to fix the economy, anticipating the crisis and its outcomes. The event had more than 400 participants, consisting not only of students, but from professor, staff and local entrepreneurs. The president of the university watched the event and was very pleased afterwards. Also, all of the professors (including the deans) attended the event, creating a long line even outside the building — even after they put extra chairs in the room, reaching the maximum limit of the venue. In the event he said that the solution to the problems in Brazil lies in Brazilian Students For Liberty – an endorsement that its helping the organization.
In an era of political change for Ukraine, many young people are becoming interested in the ideas of liberty. With that in mind, a group of libertarian students in the country organized a series of lectures for students about the fundamental principles of free market thought.
In 2015, the group successfully held Liberty Classes in KNEU (Kyiv National Economic University), KNU of Taras Schevchenko and in Odessa. Lecturers included prominent economists, journalists, politicians, writers and historians. The classes continue to this day and have had more more than 1500 participants so far.
Hong Kong has long been revered by libertarians as an example of free market economics at work. Nonetheless, the Chinese special economic zone has not had an active libertarian student movement in its entire history. That all changed in 2015, when Students For Liberty Hong Kong was founded. The group hosted its first Liberal Youth Seminar in the city’s history, bringing together a promising group of libertarian student leaders at the University of Hong Kong. The seminar was two-days long and received a fair amount of press attention for being one of Hong Kong’s most unique student events.
Student Group of the Year
The Ajuricaba Club is the biggest libertarian Student Group in the north of Brazil. More than 60 Local Coordinators from BSFL and 50 students participate in the group, which is based in Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon Forest. The group aims to ignite the liberty movement in the amazonian society, focusing in changing the deep socialist ties that exist among the Manauara community. The group gatherings have debates, lectures and workshops that teach and empower its members.
The Ajuricaba Club is only one year old, but it is already planning to expand into small cities across the region. However, there are many challenges into expanding into the amazon, most of the cities are only connected to Manaus by boat, and the nearest one is one day away through the Amazon River. But this group is up to the test, they are planning 19 events in 2016 and expect to host up to 3000 people in those events.
As one of the fastest growing groups at Florida Gulf Coast University, the Eagles For Liberty has initiated frequent and meaningful pro-liberty events such as guest speakers, interactive tabling activities, and a free-speech chalkboard wall in celebration of our first amendment right. Most notably, the club hosted SFL’s first-ever Florida Gulf Coast Regional Conference, which hosted over 70 students from both the east and west coasts of Florida. During the same semester, this student group was able to host a score of speaker events that boasted high attendance numbers, including Wendy Purnell of PERC on free market environmentalism, Tyler Coward of FIRE on free speech codes at FGCU, Professor Timothy Hsiao on the moral case for gun rights, and Ben Powell of FAU on an economic case for open immigration. In the case of the PERC speaker, the event was hosted alongside the Institute for Humane Studies as part of their speaker series on academic freedom, another prominent partnership for Eagles for Liberty.
Even among the most repressive regimes in Latin America, the members of EsLibertad Venezuela have not grown weary, and conversely and bravely, have used the circumstances to your advantage to defend freedom. In November, 2015 EsLibertad Venezuela held their first-ever Regional Conference in Caracas, a huge success that brought together the best advocates of liberty and 200 students attendees. This Conference was held among universities shutdowns that changed all plans and forced the team to hold the conference in a different university that had almost no EsLibertad leadership -and with the little advance of less than a month.
EsLibertad Venezuela also held a National Meeting of Students for Freedom, where 77 student leaders eager to defend freedom from across the country attended. The event lasted three days and took place at Pozo de Rosas, a place usually used for retreats and that for security reason wasn’t disclosed until few days before the event. It featured the participation of 13 speakers, from which 5 were general conferences and the rest of the speakers made break out sessions, where each participant could choose which presentation to attend. Each participant had the opportunity to attend 9 high level lectures.
Everytime the EsLibertad Venezuela team defends freedom in their country, they endanger their safety and own freedom. It’s very hard to find a group more evidently committed to the cause and inspiring for the rest.
Maastricht Students For Liberty — Maastricht University (Netherlands)
Maastricht Students For Liberty (MSFL) are a leading example for what a student group can achieve even on a relatively small campus. Within three years the group has managed become one of the most active libertarian student groups in Europe. The group has organized lectures with attendances of up to 450 attendees, hosted three conferences, and maintains an active blog and social media presence. They are revered in Europe as one of the most active groups on the continent.
Students for Individual Liberty — University of Virginia (USA)
During 2015, SIL had several big events that engaged group members, students at UVA, and members of the greater Charlottesville, VA area to spread the ideals of liberty. The first is the “Incarceration Nation” event which included tabling with a fake jail cell to get word out about the panel. The panel had over 125 UVA students attend to learn about the flaws in the US criminal justice system and the need for reform. Next, SIL held a “Farming in Fear” event, which consisted of a documentary screening and Q&A about government regulation and intervention in small business and family farming. SIL had over 40 people attend, including prominent political leaders in Charlottesville and central Virginia. Putting these events together required great organizational skills, promotional work, and teamwork on behalf of SIL’s leaders and members.
SIL hosts a Classical Liberal Roundtable (CLR) discussion every other week. Each CLR is focused on a specific issue or topic in libertarianism, like the non-aggression principle, taxation, law in anarchy, the right to die, drug war, and more. This benefits members who are not well versed in the specific topic to learn more from those members who are more informed. SIL picks a variety of different topics and picks topics that are controversial even among libertarians, as to stimulate discussion. This is a unique way to expose students to the ideals of liberty in a fun and low-pressure way. Everyone who attends is able to learn something new about topics and issues in the liberty movement.
SIL works hard to consistently get high attendance to conferences in the region. Leaders always organize carpools and book hotels early, so members only register and show up. SIL had 13 students attend ISFLC15, 4 students attend YALCON15, and 9 students attend the Pittsburgh SFL Regional Conference15. Larger groups allow bonding as a group, but also introduce newer members to the liberty movement. Conferences are where students go from being invested in the ideals of liberty to being invested in the liberty movement as a whole.