Liberty Fund

Liberty Fund logo: ama-gi, cuneiform inscription that is the earliest-known written appearance of the word "freedom" (amagi), or "liberty", taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. Ideas about free markets, limited government, and individual liberty are the focal points for the discussions and conversations which Liberty Fund fosters in its conferences, publication efforts, and website activities. It attracts readers and conference participants who are interested in exploring further the classical liberal tradition which have evolved over the past three or four hundred years. Note: See the Liberty Fund Blue Brochure (2010) and the Liberty Fund Website for general information about the Liberty Fund.

Liberty Fund’s Founding and its 50th Anniversary

Liberty Fund was founded in 1960 by the Indiana businessman and lawyer Pierre F. Goodrich (1894-1973) and is based in Indianapolis. 2010 is therefore the 50th Anniversary year for the Liberty Fund and a number of special events are planned in order to celebrate the Fund reaching this milestone. Several of Liberty Fund’s earliest conferences are being “re-convened” using the same readings as those used in the original conferences. [Note: The readings for some of these early conferences can be found in the Reading List section of the Online Library of Liberty website. See for example the 50th Anniversary Conference on Freedom and Power See also about the 50th Anniversary Conferences.

The Meaning of the Amagi Symbol

The cuneiform inscription that serves as Liberty Fund's Logo and as a design element in our books is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.

According to Samuel Noah Kramer in From the Tablets of Sumer (1956), Lagash was the site of the first recorded social-reform movement. Once considered a relatively free society of farmers, cattle breeders, boatmen, fishermen, merchants, and craftsmen, the Lagashites found that a change in political power had stripped them of their political and economic freedoms and subjected them to heavy taxation and exploitation by wealthy officials.

Sumerian historians believe that at this low point in Lagash’s history, Urukagina became the leader of the Sumerian city-state of Girsu/Lagash and led a popular movement that resulted in the reform of the oppressive legal and governmental structure of Sumeria.

Although Urukagina’s reforms were short-lived, the oppressive conditions in the city before the reforms were recorded in cuneiform on several clay cones and an oval-shaped plaque excavated by the French in 1878. On the tablets of the period is found the first written reference to the concept of liberty (amagi or amargi, literally, “return to the mother”), used in reference to the process of reform. See Samuel Noah Kramer, From the Tablets of Sumer (1956).

Liberty Fund’s Activities

The Foundation develops, supervises, and finances its own educational activities to foster thought and encourage discourse on enduring intellectual issues pertaining to liberty. This is done through the implementation of different programs:

1. the conducting of about 100 conferences each year throughout the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe.
2. the publication of about 10 books each year.
3. the production of video and audio tapes including the Intellectual Portrait Series of videotapes and DVDs which records conversations with some of the most significant thinkers of our time.
4. the sponsoring of websites such as The Library of Economics and Liberty (Econlib) and the Online Library of Liberty (OLL) where classic texts are put online and online forums are held.

As a tax-exempt, private operating foundation, Liberty Fund's purposes are educational. It does not, therefore, engage in political action of any kind. It fulfills its mission by conducting programs, not by awarding grants to outside organizations or individuals.

Conference Program

Liberty Fund has held to date over 3,000 small, scholarly conferences on a variety of subjects relating to liberty and individual responsibility. Trial and error over the decades has shown that a Socratic discussion format is the most conducive to a full and open exploration of ideas. As a result, all Liberty Fund conferences are roundtable in nature. The exchange of ideas is facilitated by a scholar who is chosen to lead the discussion but who is neither a conferee nor an advocate.

Most Liberty Fund conferences fall into one or two categories: colloquia, which are based upon previously published writings; and symposia, where new areas are explored with the presentation of original papers. Conferences are intended to illuminate some aspect of human liberty and responsibility in an interdisciplinary manner. Liberty Fund invites groups of about 15 persons with differing views and from several disciplines to participate in each conference. Conferences usually include six sessions and time for productive informal discussion of the readings over two days.

Co-Sponsored Program

Liberty Fund and its co-sponsoring institutions conduct educational programs in order to advance the exploration of liberty and the ideal of a free and responsible society. The conferences are focused on text-based Socratic discussion, but may also feature lectures, panel presentations, and roundtable discussions. The participants at these programs are typically undergraduate students, graduate students, high school teachers, non-academic professionals, or academics.

The co-sponsoring institutions include bodies such as the Acton Institute, the Bill of Rights Institute, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Instituto Liberal, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs, the Property and Environmental Research Center, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, the McConnell Center, and the Universidad Francisco Marroquin.

Publishing

Through its publishing program over the past three decades, Liberty Fund has made available almost 400 titles in the fields of history, politics, philosophy, law, education, and economics. The books are edited in accordance with the highest standards of scholarly publishing and include new forewords, prefaces, or introductions by leading authorities, as well as annotations, bibliographies, and indexes. They are also produced according to the highest standards of book production and appear on acid-free paper with Smyth-sewn signatures for both the hardcover and the paperback editions. See Liberty Fund's online catalog for their up-to-date book releases.

Some of the noteworthy volumes which have appeared include a number of collections of major scholarly significance such as the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (7 vols.), the Sraffa edition of the Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo (11 vols.), Liberty Fund’s Natural Law and Enlightenment Series (31 of a projected 44 vols.), and most recently the Historical-Critical Edition of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (4 vols.). All of these titles are also available online at the Online Library of Liberty website. Many Liberty Fund books are also available for online reading.

Web sites

Liberty Fund is on the Web at http://www.libertyfund.org. The online libraries are designed to further Liberty Fund's educational activities by making available to the public classic works in the free market, conservative, and classical liberal traditions, and by encouraging discussion of the ideas these works contain.

The Library of Economics and Liberty website began in 1999 and contains over 120 classics of economic thought spanning the 17th century to the present; dozens of articles about current economic issues; a Concise Encyclopedia of Economics with scores of articles about key economic concepts and short biographies of leading economists; a weblog for the discussion of economic issues; a collection of podcasts of interviews with leading economists and academics; and many other bibliographies, biographies, and articles to assist readers in exploring the nature of the free market.

The Online Library of Liberty is a multi-award winning website which was launched in March 2004. It makes available at no charge to the public outstanding resources for teaching and learning about the humanities. It has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Humanities as one of the best websites in the humanities and it has been selected by the Library of Congress to be part of its Minerva archiving project to preserve material which is "of historical importance to the Congress and to the American people." As of July 2010 the OLL contained over 1,250 books on history, law, literature, music, philosophy, political theory, religion, and science. Accompanying these classic works is a growing body of supporting material in the form of short biographies, bibliographical and thematic essays, user created reading lists, and other study aides. The texts are available in a variety of formats: facsimile PDF, HTML, e-book (PDF), and soon in ePub format for hand-held reading devices. The OLL also hosts a large number of Liberty Fund’s published books which can be read online here.

Over 1,000 of the OLL titles are available as downloadable E-Book PDFs for reading on portable reading devices. These titles are also part of the Portable Library of Liberty data DVD which is available free of charge upon request via the OLL website. As of July 2010 over 17,000 copies of the Portable Library of Liberty DVD have been given away to interested persons all over the world. The disk contains the audio files (in MP3 format) of the Intellectual Portrait Series: Conversations with Leading Classical Liberal Figures of Our Time and The Legacy of Friedrich von Hayek lectures.

A copy of the Portable Library of Liberty data DVD will be sent free of charge by contacting us here.

DVDs, Video and Audio Tapes

Liberty Fund has produced DVDs, video and audio tapes, which are for sale through the Liberty Fund catalog of publications. There are videos on Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations, The Industrial Revolution, Hong Kong, Design for Liberty: The American Constitution, and The Legacy of Friedrich von Hayek. Hour long “conversations” with 27 leading political philosophers and economists are also available as DVDs or downloadable audio files as part of the Intellectual Portrait Series: Conversations with Leading Classical Liberal Figures of Our Time.

See also

• Federalist Society
• Cato Institute
• Constitution Society
• Independent Institute
• Independence Institute

External links

• Liberty Fund’s main website
• The 50th Anniversary Conference on Freedom and Power
• Liberty Fund’s online books catalog
• Liberty Fund Conferences
• Liberty Fund’s economics website - The Library of Economics and Liberty (Econlib)
• The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
• The Online Library of Liberty
• The Portable Library of Liberty data DVD

Liberty Fund’s collections of major scholarly significance:

• The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (7 vols.)
• The Sraffa edition of the Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo (11 vols.)
• Liberty Fund’s Natural Law and Enlightenment Series (40 vols.)
• The Historical-Critical Edition of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (4 vols.)