Atlas Year in Review 2007

INSIDEMessage to Supporters of Atlas . . . . . . . .3

Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

North America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

Middle East & North Africa . . . . . . . . .10

Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

Asia & the Pacific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

20 Years with Atlas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

A Tribute to the St. Angelos . . . . . . . . .18

Creating a Better Future . . . . . . . . . . . .19

Catalyst and Connector . . . . . . . . . . . .20

The Atlas Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

Create a Legacy of Freedom . . . . . . . .24

How You Can Advance Freedom . . . . .25

The 2007 Liberty Forum . . . . . . . . . . .26

The Revival of Classical Liberalism . . .28

Reception in Honor of Leonard Liggio . .30

FSSO Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31

The 2006 Freedom Dinner . . . . . . . . .32

Templeton Freedom Awards . . . . . . . .34

Sir Antony Fisher Awards . . . . . . . . . . .36

Freda Utley Prize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38

TFI and SFS Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39

Atlas Events Around the Globe . . . . . .40

Financial Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42

Thank You to Prize Judges . . . . . . . . . .44

Atlas Y E A R - I N - R E V I E WFALL 2007

Organizational Growth

In 2007, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation experienced significant growth and change.In January, Allegra Hewell joined as office manager and is now working as events assistant, coor-

dinating all of Atlas’s trademark events. In June, Atlas’s staff grew again with Whitney Garrisoncoming on as a development associate, and former Atlas intern Niki Straub returning to becomeassistant to the president. Rebecca Waskey, who joined Atlas in October 2006 as assistant to thepresident, is now Atlas’s communications associate, coordinating and editing Atlas’s publicationsand features on Atlas’s Web site. In August, Atlas bid farewell to its long-time director of publicaffairs, Elena Ziebarth, and in November, Atlas added Eva Andraskova as its new office manager.Atlas also hosted three interns this year, including our current intern, Anca Bogdana Rusu, fromRomania.

Throughout this growth and change Atlas remains comitted to its mission, “To discover, developand support ‘intellectual entrepreneurs’ worldwide who can advance the Atlas vision of a society offree and responsible individuals.”

2 Atlas c Year-in-Review 2007

Family Growth

The Atlas family grew in June withthe birth of Morgan Juliet Lips, the

first child of Atlas executive vice presi-dent, Brad Lips and his wife, Cindy.(See related story on page 19.) Morganis pictured here wearing a bib sent byAtlas supporters, Ali and MarshallStocker. As you can see, she is not yetenthusiastic about the free-marketcause. Brad promises to work on this inthe months and years ahead.

Atlas Network Growth

Atlas is now working with 290 think tanks in 80 countries, up from 250 in 65 countries just threeyears ago. We expect this growth to continue, as Atlas’s pipeline of new “intellectual entrepre-

neurs” – participating in Atlas training programs and consulting with us about their plans for newprojects to advance liberty – is as large and diverse as ever.

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation workswith think tanks and individuals around the worldto advance a vision of a society of free and responsi-ble individuals, based upon private property rights,limited government under the rule of law and themarket order. Atlas is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organi-zation that is supported solely by donations fromindividuals, foundations and corporations.

Board of DirectorsWilliam Sumner (Chairman)

Dan Grossman (Chairman-Elect)John BlundellTim Browne

Alejandro Garza LagüeraAbby Moffat

George PearsonAndrea Millen Rich

René ScullLinda Whetstone

Hon. Curtin Winsor

StaffAlejandro A. Chafuen

President & CEOLeonard P. Liggio

Executive Vice President of AcademicsBradley A. Lips

Executive Vice President & COOJo Kwong

Vice President of Institute RelationsEva AndraskovaOffice Manager

Cindy CerquitellaCoalition Relations Associate

Colleen DybleDirector of Coalition Relations

Whitney GarrisonDonor Relations Associate

Allegra HewellEvents AssistantRómulo Lopez

Program ManagerChristian Robey

Associate Director of ProgramsAlexis Serote

Associate Director of Donor RelationsNiki Straub

Assistant to the President & CEOPriscilla TacujanProgram ManagerRebecca Waskey

Communications AssociateYiQiao Xu

Program Manager

Atlas Senior FellowsWilliam DennisDeroy MurdockGabriel Zinny

2000 N. 14th Street, Suite 550Arlington, Virginia 22201

703-934-6969 – Phone703-352-7530 – Faxwww.atlasUSA.org

A Year at Atlas

As you review this annual report, we know you will beinspired – perhaps, awestruck – by the friends of the free soci-ety in our network. Thanks to your involvement, Atlas hashelped many free-market institutes and “intellectual entrepre-neurs” with grants, contacts, advice, credibility and moralbacking.

All of our partners are committed to dis-covering and spreading the truth. Insome extreme cases, this puts ourfriends at odds with local rulers. Inthose difficult and courageous battles,they take solace in the knowledge thatthey have the support of individuals likeyou, who share their commitment tothe free exchange of ideas and to therights of every person.

In turn, we know that you take pride in your important role:helping Atlas build and nurture this extended family of free-dom champions.

On these pages you can see the work of Atlas and of our part-ners in the freedom movement. But truthfully, words andphotos can seldom convey the magnitude of the efforts of theindividuals portrayed in these pages. We encourage youto meet our allies in person at events such as Atlas’sannual Freedom Dinner in November (see pages30-31) or the Liberty Forum (in Atlanta on April25-26, 2008, see pages 24-25). You can evenvisit them in their home countries to witnessfirsthand their committed, daily work toadvance freedom, despite modest budg-ets and sometimes difficultenvironments.

Outside of the developed andEnglish-speaking world, a think tankis still an unfamiliar concept. Inthose countries, 80 percent of thethink tanks we work with havebudgets averaging a mereU.S.$60,000—so you can imaginehow far your contributions go insupporting these institutes.Enlightened donors can give a hugeboost to these little Davids, who arefighting against reinvigorated, big-government Goliaths.

Whether in Brussels, Caracas, Tehran, or Washington, thosewho want more government and less freedom seem to be ris-ing in power. They might outgun and outspend our freedomchampions, but no weapon can quiet good ideas and a love offreedom forever. Atlas’s friends around the world have thepower of truth on their side.

As long as you partner with us to con-tinue to provide a place for theseintellectual entrepreneurs to craft anddisseminate their message, freedom willalways have a chance.

A Message toSupporters of Atlas

Atlas c Year-in-Review 2007 3

From Alejandro A. Chafuen and Bradley A. Lips


Established Institute Profile: CIEN (Guatemala)

Centro de Investigaciones Económicas Nacionales (CIEN)

celebrated its 25th anniversary this yearand it continues to promote free-marketideas in Guatemala through publicationsand conferences. In recent years, CIENhas also developed one of the most suc-cessful courses for journalists in terms ofcontent and attendance. It has designed an annual 40-day trainingsession for economic reporters; the last two years CIEN has addedmonthly seminars on current events, each attended by nearly 50 peo-ple. Atlas is promoting CIEN’s success model among similarinstitutes in other countries. Honduras’s recently founded InstitutoVeritas will launch a similar workshop next year, with guidance fromCIEN. CIEN also is an Atlas Templeton Freedom Award winner.

Reflections

Latin America

Intellectual EntrepreneurAngel Soto (Chile)

Angel Soto is one of the leaders of Centro de EstudiosBicentenario, which focuses on the history of Chile and the

Americas. He has been working closely with other groups in theregion, including Centro Para laApertura y el Desarollo de AméricaLatina (CADAL) in Argentina.Their joint efforts include the publi-cation of a book highlighting thechallenges for Latin America from afree-market perspective, to be pub-lished in both Chile and Argentina.Together with Pía Greene, a formerAtlas fellow, Angel Soto launchedthe Centro de Investigación deMedios y Sociedad, a university-basedmedia research center.

Fundación Carlos Lleras (Colombia)

After a brief stint in politics, Rafael Merchan, the for-mer executive director of Instituto de Ciencia

Política (ICP, Colombia), returned to the think tankworld to launch Fundación Carlos Lleras in Colombia(named after Colombia’s president during 1966-70). LastAugust, the institute held its first major event, an inter-national conference on economics and security,featuring panelists Steve Johnson of the U.S. DefenseDepartment; Juan Fernando Londoño, a former memberof President Uribe’s Cabinet; and Juan Manuel Santos,Colombia’s current Minister of Defense.

Institute Profile

The Universidad Francisco Marroquin (UFM) inGuatemala continues to be a leader in education for

the free society in Central America. After decades offriendly and fruitful relationships, Atlas launched a collab-orative effort to raise and administer funds for theUniversity. This program was announced at the 2006Mont Pelerin Society meeting in Guatemala. TheFrancisco Marroquin Fund will enable UFM to expandand improve its educational reach in Guatemala and theAmericas.

AsociaciónLatinoamericana y delCaribe de Derecho yEconomía (ALACDE,Brazil), led by scholarJuan Javier del Granado,has launched two neweducational projects: anonline law school and aprogram to educatejudges on economicprinciples. Future plansinclude a program totranslate classical legaland economic texts fromEnglish into bothSpanish and Portuguese,an online American lawlibrary, and an academicpress.

At least one think tank in the Atlas network

No think tank in the Atlas network


Reflections

Intellectual EntrepreneurRicardo Salles (Brazil)

R icardo Salles founded the MovimentoEndireita Brasil (MEB) in 2006. MEB

works to increase public awareness of theimportance ofthe ideas of afree society—property rights(including intel-lectualproperty), trans-parency, limitedgovernment andlow taxation. Ithas produced two television debates and pub-lished several newspaper and magazinearticles. MEB worked to prevent the adminis-tration of President Luiz Inácio “Lula” daSilva from further aligning Brazil with otherleft-wing governments in South America.Salles and MEB organized several publicmeetings and promoted street parades withthousands of people in support of these prin-ciples. Salles was first introduced to Atlas byMargaret Tse, from Instituto Liberdade(Porto Alegre, Brazil).

Institute ProfileInstituto Veritas (Honduras)

In 2006, Guillermo Peña received Atlas support to prepare a businessplan for Instituto Veritas, which he launched in Honduras earlier this

year. In the short time it has been operating, Instituto Veritas organized athree-day program, attended by Spain’s former Economy Minister,

Cristóbal Montoro. The pro-gram included four publicconferences in San Pedro Sulaand Tegucigalpa, several inter-views with the news media andmeetings with both govern-ment and business leaders.Over the next year, Veritas

plans to launch two publications and introduce a series of seminars forjournalists, partnering with CIEN (Guatemala) for the latter effort.

José Cantero (Paraguay)

José Cantero launched Fundación PrimeroParaguay in 2006. A graduate of the University of

Illinois, he worked for Paraguay’s Ministry of Economyand Central Bank. He is also a reporter at the LaNación newspaper in Asunción. José was first intro-duced to Atlas by Gabriel Salvia of Argentina’sCADAL, and shortly thereafter participated in Atlas’s

annual Liberty Forum in Philadelphia. He is currently coordinating aninternational conference to be held before the end of 2007.

Intellectual Entrepreneur

Established Institute Profile: CADAL (Argentina)

Centro Para la Apertura y el Desarollo deAmérica Latina (CADAL) creates new value inthe policy world bytargeting a niche out-side of its owncountry. Founded byGabriel Salvia,CADAL worksclosely with Cuban Americans to educate theLatin American public about the realities andperils of Cuban communism. Recently,CADAL organized programs in Uruguay, topromote free-market ideas in the context of theU.S.-Uruguay trade liberalization negotiations.

Pablo Arosemena launchedFundación Ecuador Libre, which

is a new institute in Quito supported bythe local business community. EcuadorLibre publishes a weekly legislativereport tracking and analyzing legislationin the Ecuadorian Congress from theperspective of its effect on a free society.At the beginning of 2007, Ecuador Libre invited formerSalvadoran President Francisco Flores to help develop the organi-zation’s strategic plan, and devise programs to protectconstitutional liberties from the threat posed by President RafaelCorrea’s statist, populist policies.

Hispanic American Center for Economic Research(HACER, Washington, DC) was created by Atlas in

1999 to address the scarcity of market-oriented, non-politicalresearch impacting U.S. Hispanicsand the greater Spanish-speakingworld. Today, HACER publishes anelectronic newsletter that reaches

more than 15,000 readers around the world on these issues(www.hacer.org).

During the first quarter of 2007,Agencia Interamericana de

Prensa Económica (AIPE) edited andtranslated 120 opinion editorials writ-ten by 48 authors from 10 differentcountries.

Maryland Public Policy Institute (Maryland)

There are an estimated 523,000foster care children in the

United States, and 11,500 inMaryland alone. In 2005, theMaryland Public Policy Institute’s(MPPI) senior fellow, Dan Lips, formulated a policy pro-posal to offer these children scholarships to attendhigh-quality schools of their choice, regardless of change inresidency. In 2005 and 2006, MPPI published two reportsadvocating better educational options for children in fostercare: “School Choice for Maryland Foster Care Children:Fostering Stability, Satisfaction, and Achievement”(2005); and “Focus Group Study: Foster Care Families,Children, and Education” (2006). Earlier this year, MPPIpresident Christopher Summers was invited to the office ofState Delegate Nancy Stocksdale (R-Carroll County) to dis-cuss the initiative. Shortly after that meeting, during the2007 Maryland legislative session, Delegate Stocksdaleintroduced legislation to provide K–12 tuition scholarshipsto children in foster care. To capitalize on this opportunity,MPPI plans to launch an Education Initiative for FosterCare Children to promote school choice opportunities forfoster care children in Maryland and around the country.

Institute Policy Impact

North America

For the first time in yearsMaine’s state budget

included no significant taxincreases! The Maine Heritage Policy Center (MHPC)played a strong role in fighting tax increase proposals.While the Center’s Tax Payer’s Bill of Rights initiative didnot pass, it has become the standard by which other taxbills are measured. MHPC released a new model Tax andExpenditure Limitation measure that could become thebasis for an initiative.

“A tlas’s long-term commitment to making the world a freerand more humane place is indispensable… Atlas was

part of an idea that took 11 years to bloom. The staff encouragedthe seed of a vision and they have encouraged us and guided usat every step of our development. Thank you, Atlas!”

Lee Wishing, Center for Vision & Values (Grove City College, Grove City, PA)

J ohn Carpay (Canadian Constitution Foundation) con-tinues to pioneer efforts to challenge Alberta’s ban on

private health insurance. On May 2, 2007, CCF announcedits support for Lindsay McCreith’sconstitutional legal challenge toOntario’s health care monopoly.McCreith, like other Canadians, isprohibited by law from buying pri-vate health insurance for essentialmedical services.


Chris Derry (Kentucky)

Born out of frustration at an unjustified local tax increase inBowling Green, Kentucky, Chris Derry opened the doors

of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy (BIPP) in 2003—without any major donors. Derry, BIPP founder and president,spent the majority of his career in marketing and sales and sawthe development of a think tank as an innovative way of sellinghis fellow Kentuckians on the idea that free markets, humanliberty and limited government should be the primary ingredi-ents for transforming Kentucky public policy. With his ownsavings he loaned money to BIPP, persuaded a couple businessfriends to donate $10,000 in start-up capital and went to work.When it comes down to it, Chris says, “There is nothing as

motivating as starting a venture without a paycheck!” Now,nearly four years later, the Bluegrass Institute has made majorstrides and its budget is expected to reach $500,000 by 2008. In


John Carpay recently attended TheAtlas Experience in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada.



Show-Me Institute (Missouri)

T he Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based free-marketthink tank, issued several studies during the past year

that have had a tremendouspublic policy impact. JoeHaslag, economics professor atthe University of Missouri-Columbia and research fellowwith the Show-Me Institute, tes-tified before committees in theMissouri House and Senateregarding his study, “UnleashingVideo Competition,” whichargued that increased competi-tion among video providerswould save Missouri consumers$66 million to $76 million annu-ally, with a net gain to the stateof more than $20 million peryear. After the study’s release,Missouri's legislature and governor passed a law deregulatingcable franchising in the state.


Rio Grande Foundation (New Mexico)

On Election Day 2006, after Albuquerque’s city councilapproved Mayor Martin Chavez’s proposal for a $300

million streetcar system, the Rio Grande Foundation (RGF)

was the first organization to openlycriticize the proposal. After severalmonths of protests by citizens, whooften relied on data provided by

RGF, the city council repealed the legislation.

While New Mexico legislators went on a spending binge in2007—increasing general fund spending by 11 percent—legislation to enact a constitutional amendment based onColorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights and the Rio GrandeFoundation’s research was introduced during the 2007 ses-sion and received a “do-pass” in one committee.


Al Gore’s global warming documentary, AnInconvenient Truth, called on Americans to con-

serve energy by reducingtheir home electricity con-sumption. The TennesseeCenter for Policy Researchuncovered that Gore, theglobal warming movement’s chief spokesman,devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) in2006—more than 20 times the national average,which is 10,656 kWh per year according to theDepartment of Energy.


August, Chris shared what he learned about building a donorbase from scratch at The Atlas Experience in Niagara-on-theLake, Ontario, using the Acton Institute’s “Call of theEntrepreneur” video as a training tool.

Chris Derry spoke to intellectual entrepre-neurs and guests on how to build a strongdonor base at the Atlas Experience.

Rio Grande Foundationpresident, Paul Gessingaddressed an audienceduring the Friedman DayCelebration, which wasco-sponsored by RGFand the FriedmanFoundation.

During RGF’s Friedman Day celebration,State Senator Kent Cravens (R-Albuquerque)spoke to attendees about education reform.

The Show-Me Institute’s JoeHaslag successfully argues thepoints in his report,“Unleashing VideoCompetition,” before Missouri’slegislature, which ultimatelyhelped deregulate cable fran-chising in the state.

“Thank goodness Atlas gener-ated ‘seed capital’ early on,which kept paper in the printerand ink in our cartridges.”

–Chris Derry, 2004


Free Society Institute (Slovenia)

T his past year, the FreeSociety Institute (FSI)produced various studies,

including one analyzing theincentive of unionized workersand another on the issue of taxreform. FSI publishes a biweekly e-newsletter, TheTribunal, which covers current economic issues, offersscholarly economic studies and provides lessons in theclassical liberal tradition. FSI experts write for a regularcolumn in the Daily Finance newspaper and are collabo-rating with the Adriatic Institute in Croatia. This year,they testified on the topic of the labor market at a sessionof the Slovenian Economic Council to the PrimeMinister. The ensuing debate received nationwide televi-sion coverage. FSI was also awarded with an Atlas grantfor new institutes this year. This young organization isrun by three brothers, Matej, Matjaz and Mitja

Steinbacher.Matej served asan Atlas fellowin 2003.

Institute Profile

Europe

Reflections

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In August 2004, Kalin Manolov and his colleagues at theBulgarian Society of Individual Liberty, along with the

Institute for Market Economics (IME, Bulgaria), launchedan electronic newsletter to promote the adoption of a flat tax.In 2007, the Bulgarian government introduced a 10 percentflat tax which will go into effect in 2008.

A tlas is in contact with three new think tanks in Poland. Thefirst, Project Lodz, was formed by a group of like-minded

individuals in the city of Lodz while working with the AdamSmith Research Centre (ASRC, Poland) on a campaign for anew tax system. Project Lodz aims to show how free market poli-cies at the local level can lead to greater prosperity and quality oflife for city residents.

This summer, Atlas hosted a Koch Summer Fellow, PawelLisiewicz, who recently launched Project: Poland. Pawelworked at Atlas for three months, learning about the free-mar-ket movement and think tank management. Project: Polandseeks to target a younger generation of Poles, under age 40,many of whom are migrating to the United Kingdom. TheProject plans to focus on the issues of European Union integra-tion, migration, constitutional safeguards, student outreach and

Country Feature: Poland

Established Institute Profile: Hellenic Leadership Institute (Greece)

A s our involvement in Egypt and the Arab world becomes stronger,I welcome opportunities to share our experience with the rest of

the Atlas network in the future.” – Alexandros Mantikas, HellenicLeadership Institute (HLI).

The Hellenic Leadership Institute (HLI), based in Greece, has gonebeyond Europe’sborders, laying thegroundwork forthe advance offreedom in theMiddle East. In2006, HLI won the2006 TempletonFreedom Awardfor Initiative inPublic Relations.

Twins, Matjaz (left) and Matej Steinbacher (right) with MelanieChafuen at Atlas’s annual Liberty Forum in April.

European Resource Bank panelists SvetlaKostadinove (Institute for Market Economics,Bulgaria), Matthew Elliot (TaxPayers’ Alliance,UK) and Vincent Ginnochio (Liberté Cherie,France) spoke during the “Examples andLessons” panel, offering practical tools andstrategies for making a policy impact. TheEuropean Resource Bank was held inRomania in September.

Atlas President Alex Chafuen with the president and vice pres-ident of the Hellenic Leadership Institute (Greece), AnthonyLivanios (center) and Alexandros Mantikas (right)

Institute Profile





“The Adriatic Institute for Public Policy, athink tank based in Croatia, has found thatgovernments that adopt flat-tax regimes seeeither steady or increased revenues within thefirst year.” – Wall Street Journal, Opinion(Europe).The Adriatic Institute’s (AI) work to promotethe adoption of a flat tax in Croatia has gainedinternationalattention, hav-ing pushedthe Croatiangovernment totake a hardlook at its tax-ation policy inlight of theflat tax revolu-tion across theformer Sovietbloc.

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translations of classics of liberty.

The third institute is still in theplanning stages but could play amajor role in Poland’s growing free-market movement. This group,staffed by pubic relations experts,hopes to provide communicationsexpertise to active think tanks inPoland. They will seek to consult,

teach and assist these think tanksin finding new ways to reach moreof the mainstream media and thepublic, with the end goal of expos-

ing even more Poles to the ideas of a free society.

Then and Now – Horia Terpe

“A tlas provided an internship for me, allowing me to understandareas like think tank management and think tank and free mar-

ket networks. Atlas helped CADI to integrate in these networks,providing advice and offering access to development opportunities. Myexperience at Atlas in 2004 was the decisive moment for my career.” –Horia Terpe, Center for Institutional Analysis and Development-Eleutheria (CADI, Romania)

Horia Terpe spent the summer of2004 at Atlas as a Koch SummerFellow. During the past three years,Horia has edited a book on socialprediction and the limits of eco-nomic planning and publishedarticles in both general-interest pub-lications and academic journals. Healso contributed to Romania’s publicpolicy debate as a counselor in the -Parliament and personal advisor to

the vice president of the country’s classical liberal party, while at thesame time teaching at the National School of Public Administration inBucharest. Early next year he plans to defend his doctoral dissertation oninstitutions and the market.

In May 2005, after a brief butintense stint at the Ministry ofCulture, Horia helped found theCenter for Institutional Analysis andDevelopment-Eleutheria (CADI), afree market think tank in Bucharest,Romania, where he is currently exec-utive director. On September 13-17,2007, Horia and his team at CADIorganized the fourth annualEuropean Resource Bank meeting.



THEN (2004) – Horia with the presidentof the Leadership Institute (Virginia),Morton Blackwell

NOW (2007) – Atlas’s Jo Kwong withHoria in Romania at the EuropeanResource Bank.

Pawel Lisiewicz, one of Atlas’sinterns, recently started thethink tank Project: Poland.

Natasha Srdoc-Samy, president of theAdriatic Institute for Public Policy,spoke at Atlas’s Liberty Forum this pastspring.

A fter experiencing the negative outcomes of nationalistic and collectivist ideas,and spending hours carrying out pointless bureaucratic tasks, Marko Paunovic

sought an alternative. He found it inthe freedom movement. His universitystudies, coupled with an opportunity tostudy in the United States, where hehad access to various books andresources on economics, further solid-ified his belief in the importance offreedom. Marko was a high ranking government coun-selor, but has since left his position to work with theCenter for Liberal-Democratic Studies (Serbia).

Marko Paunovic (left) and HernanAlberro (CADAL, Argentina) (cen-ter) with Atlas’s Leonard Liggio atthe Atlas Experience.

Mirwais Hadel (Afghanistan)

L iving under the Taliban and fleeing hishome country to Pakistan was a tough

beginning for Mirwais Hadel, the 17-year-oldAfghani from Kunduz who won Atlas’s 2006Ibn Khaldoun Essay Contest. Growing up,Mirwais’s parents taught him a definition offreedom that conflicted with the austere doc-trines of the Taliban. This definition of freedom wasstrengthened when he won a scholarship from the U.S.Department of State to join the Youth Exchange and Study(YES) program.

Mirwais also attended Atlas’s workshop, “Promoting A FreeSociety, ” which was hosted by the Association for LiberalThinking in Turkey, and then completed a six-weekinternship there. This increased his determination tospread freedom. “I knew that my own country was in direneed of freedom, but I did not know much about thewhole process of promoting freedom until I participated inthis workshop. … It is my dream to do everything in mypower to help the people of my country achieve this goal.”Hadel and his Afghani YES colleagues are now preparingto launch a workshop to teach liberty to students in theirown communities.

Essay Contest Winner


The Middle East& North Africa

“One amazing idea I learned about during the program,and had known so little about before, was the idea ofthink tanks; It’s really a very productive way to producetangible results and effect change.”

Mohammad Azraq (Jordan), regarding the StudentLeadership Conference in Morocco.

A tlas’s “bottom-up approach” to promoting change is particu-larly well-suited to the Middle East, where it is crucial to

avoid the misinterpretation that liberty is a “foreign concept.” Formore than a decade, Atlas partners such as the Minaret ofFreedom Institute have been explaining that capitalism and lib-erty are deeply compatible with Islamic culture. Over the pastfew years, Atlas has increased its efforts to identify and assist localleaders in Middle Eastern countries that can make this case anddevelop local support for the ideas of freedom, leading to morethan 100 new contacts in the region that have shown an interestin free-market programs.

Atlas launched its Azad newsletter in February 2007 to circulate

Middle East Program Highlights

Sajid Anani, Atlas’s Middle East program manager, pictured here with some ofthe participants whom Atlas sponsored to attend Atlas’s Gulf CorporationCouncil (GCC) Leadership Conference in Oman.

“We just did a petition now, to try and unblock [the bloggingtool] WordPress in Turkey. Do you know what made the peti-tion possible? It was actually Atlas funds! Thanks again!”

“Mideast Youth often provides highlights to some of thebiggest papers worldwide, no other Middle Eastern paper ornews agency was ever powerful enough to do that, and here’sa bunch of kids achieving it!”

Esra’a Al Shafei (Bahrain), Mideast Youth




Bahrain, a tiny island country on the Arabian Gulf, is pro-ducing wonders. Mohammad Al Maskati runs the

Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR), whichseeks to create a culture of youth participation to defend therule of law and empower civil society. BYSHR has partnershipswith many American, European, and regional NGOs thatdefend human rights. It has organized several workshopsrelated to human rights and one on strategic planning.BYSHR recently launched the “Takamol (Integration) ArabYouth Network” to empower Arab youth to be active in thepolitical, economic, social, and cultural arenas. Currently,

the network has regional coordi-nators from 11 Arab countries.

Esra’a Al Shafei developed aregional website,www.mideastyouth.com, thathosts several blogs promotingfreedom, especially the rightsof minorities, throughout theIslamic World. This group hastaken the fight for freedom inthe region to a new level, bydiscussing issues that are con-

sidered to be taboo and bringing together youth from allacross the Middle East. Esra’a was featured as a speaker atThe Atlas Experience Event, and has won a $5,000 grantfrom Atlas to support her project.

Country Feature: Bahrain

Translations of classic and current texts on the ideas offreedom are very much needed in the Middle East, andthey can help establish a young think tank. In 2007, theFree Minds Association inAzerbaijan published thistranslation of FrédéricBastiat’s classic The Law.Also, in Iraq, the BaghdadEconomic Forum pro-duced and distributed anArabic translation of awonderful primer onfree-market economics,Common SenseEconomics: WhatEveryone Should Knowabout Wealth andProsperity by JamesGwartney, Richard L. Stroup andDwight R. Lee.

news from the growing number of institutes in the region, fromAssociation for Liberal Thinking celebrating its 15th anniver-sary in Turkey, to the launchof Free Thought Forum inJordan this past January.Atlas also is receiving entriesfor its second annual IbnKhaldoun Essay Contest,exploring the relationship between economics and freedomwithin the Islamic context. In its first year, the contests attractedapplicants from across the world, including winners from theU.S., Canada, Afghanistan, Iran and Morocco.

Mohammad Al Maskati speakingat the International StudentLeadership Conference in AlAkhawayn University, Ifrane,Morocco.

Established Institute Profile: Association for Liberal Thinking (Turkey)

A nother one of Atlas’s successes in 2007 involved partnering with itslong-term ally, the Association for Liberal Thinking (ALT, Turkey), to

conduct tworegional work-shops with thegoal of identi-fying andtraining intel-lectualentrepreneursto play a rolein the freedommovement.This strategyproved to be avery cost-effectiveway to meetpotential think tank leaders from more than a dozen countries in theregion, and to introduce them to ALT, a successful, working example of anindependent think tank in the Muslim world. In the course of learningabout classical liberal ideas, attendees observe that ALT has been able tohave a substantial impact on intellectual life in Turkey, while remainingindependent and rigorously devoted to principled, intellectual work.

Reflections

Participants of the Atlas-ALT workshop with Atlas’s Brad Lips (top cen-ter) in Ankara, Turkey (February 2007)


AfricaInitiative for Public Policy Analysis (Nigeria)

This year the Initiative forPublic Policy Analysis

(IPPA) completed many success-ful programs, including an essaycompetition on the theme “FreeEnterprise and Entrepreneurship:Essential Ingredients forEconomic Growth and National

Development” for students from universities throughoutNigeria. IPPA published a Nigerian version of JohanNorberg’s book, In Defense of Global Capitalism, as well asstudies on Nigeria’s informal economy and on its pensionsystem.

Institute Profile

Imani Center for Policy and Education (Ghana)

In March, IMANIreceived front page

coverage in theGhanaian Times and 20other media outlets, as

well as the attention of top health care industry players, for itsnew health care book, Fighting the Diseases of Poverty. This pastsummer, IMANI also hosted an intern from Grove City College(Grove City, Pennsylvania), Elle Speicher, who helped createIMANI’s new Web site, www.imanighana.com.

In August, IMANI held its first Annual West African SummerUniversity Seminar at Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana. Theseminar attracted some of the brightest minds from postgradu-ate, graduate and undergraduate programs from nine WestAfrican countries. The seminar challenged participants to criti-cally examine the issues facing West Africa. Seminar facultymember June Arunga said, “For the 50 students who attendedthat seminar, I could tell it was the beginning of a new chapterin their lives.”

IMANI’s efforts have been rewarded with numerous awards andrecognitions. IMANI won a Templeton Freedom Award (TFA)grant in 2006, and was a runner up for the TFA for Initiative in

Institute Profile

Established Institute Profile:Law Review Project (South Africa)

Billions of Rands in assets have been seized from the people ofSouth Africa by the government’s Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU).

In March of this year, the LawReview Project (LRP) got involvedas amici curiae (“friends of thecourt”) in a case—Mohunramand Another vs. National Directorof Public Prosecutions—in whichthe plaintiff, Mr. Mohunram,appealed against the judgment ofthe Supreme Court of Appeal(SCA), which held that the property seized was an “instru-mentality” in the commission ofthe offence of operating an illegalcasino.

Under the state’s criminal law, theslot machines were forfeited and a fine had to be paid as punishment.However, after this was done, the AFU also demanded the land andbuildings related to the casino. According to Leon Louw of the LRP,“They defend this sort of organized crime by the state by saying it’swhat’s done under RICO [Racketeer Influenced and CorruptOrganizations Act] in the U.S.!”

After the SCA rejected the argument that forfeiture of this propertywas not appropriate, the LRP stepped in. Thanks to the work of theLRP and others, in early April, the LRP won a historicalConstitutional Court judgment against the AFU! This is a win notonly for the Law Review Project, but also for the rule of law and property rights.

Reflections

Leon Louw of the Law ReviewProject in South Africa

On July 17, Atlas held its first Intern Networking HappyHour to introduce summer interns from a variety of D.C.area-based think tanks to the work of Atlas. VarneyYengbeh spoke about the work of his newly developingLiberia Institute.




Then and Now – James Shikwati (Kenya)

Arriving at the airport for an Atlas fellowship in April 2002, JamesShikwati was full of ideas, but was struggling to fight back against a

wave of threats on his 14-month old think tank, the Inter RegionEconomic Network (IREN, Kenya). The school where he taught wasattempting to jeopardize his think tank work by evicting him from hisschool residence. A telecommunication service monopoly failed to sup-ply him with a telephone line, so he was forced to make regular

46-kilometer trips—14 kilometers onfoot!—to an Internet cafe in thetown of Kericho to connect with theoutside world. Despite these andother obstacles, Shikwati says that hisAtlas fellowship provided him thesupport and energy he needed to per-severe.

Now, five years later, IREN-Kenyahas received widespread interna-tional media attention for its work in

promoting the importance of free trade, the rule of law, institutionaldevelopment, and poverty eradication in Africa. IREN launched thefirst ever African Resource Bank, anannual coalition meeting now in itsfifth year; pioneered the first annualAfrican Think Tank Training ses-sion, now in its second year;established an annual training semi-nar for East African journalists ondevelopment-related issues; andserved as the local host for the MontPelerin Society special meeting inNairobi, Kenya, this past February.IREN’s outreach through its weeklyonline magazine, The AfricanExecutive, helps to engage the busi-ness community, academia, policymakers, civil society and people fromall walks of life.


NOW (2007)- James Shikwati remainsconsistent in his principles, boldlyspeaking out against the negativeimpact of Western foreign aid onAfrica to a high-profile audience,including singer/activist Bono andGoogle co-founder Larry Page duringthis summer’s Technology,Entertainment, Design (TED) Globalconference in Tanzania. (Photo courtesy of Erik Hersman/TED)

THEN (2002)- Atlas’s Jo Kwong andColleen Dyble picked up James Shikwatifrom Washington’s Dulles InternationalAirport to start his Atlas fellowship.

Public Relations (2006). The Center was praised by one ofAtlas’s TFA judges “for [its] specific and rigorous application offree-market solutions to an array of complex social problems.”IMANI representatives won third place in a global entrepre-neurship competition organized by the University ofWashington (Seattle) for their presentation on how technologycould be used to enhance online marketing of rural agricul-tural produce.

Participants from IMANI’s first Annual West African Summer UniversitySeminar

Charles Harper (left), senior vice president of the JohnTempleton Foundation, and Eustace Davis (right), directorof the Free Market Foundation (South Africa), spoke atAtlas’s think tank breakfast during the Mont PelerinSociety special meeting in Kenya.

Atlas held a think tank breakfast, “Impacting Africathrough Think Tanks,” on the second day of the MontPelerin Society’s special meeting in Nairobi, to enhanceawareness of the wide range of free-market think tanks inAfrica and how they are impacting the intellectual cli-mate in their countries. Nearly 40 people from ninedifferent African countries attended the event.

Established Institute Profile: The Center for Free Enterprise (Korea)

The Center for FreeEnterprise (CFE)

in Seoul, Korea celebrated its 10th

Anniversary this pastspring. Atlas has beeninvolved in CFE’s devel-opment and growthsince its founding in1997, and has played amajor role in inspiringits founder, Byeong-HoGong to start this thinktank. In 1996, Gong, through an internet search, came across infor-mation about an upcoming Mont Pelerin Society meeting and Atlasinternational workshop in Turkey. He attended both events and wasinspired by the groups in the developing world who were workingtowards freedom. Believing that he could do the same, he returnedto Korea and immediately began to start a think tank. During thelast 10 years, the Center for Free Enterprise has successfully movedthe idea of free markets into the mainstream of South Korea’s polit-ical debate. CFE has educated thousands of students on practicalfree-market principles and reached thousands more Koreans withits many book translations. CFE has also won two TempletonFreedom Awards (Prize for Student Outreach in 2006, TempletonFreedom Grant in 2005).

Reflections

Asia and the Pacific

Intellectual EntrepreneurMala K.S. Gunasekera (Sri Lanka)

A fter Sri Lanka’s government took Mala Gunasekera’s land for public use, sherealized the full extent of the state’s disregard for the individual, the rule of law

and private property rights. As a lawyer, she has since dedicated herself to assistingother individuals whoseland has been unjustlyseized. In 2004, Malawas also involved inorganizing the MontPelerin Society meetingin Sri Lanka. Currently,she is working towardsimproving the public’sunderstanding of freemarket principles in hercountry by giving lec-tures to fellow lawyersand university students,both in Sri Lanka and inthe United States.

Atlas’s Yiqiao Xu with Chung-Ho Kim, president of theCenter for Free Enterprise in Korea during CFE’s 10thAnniversary celebration. During the dinner, CFEawarded Atlas with a plaque, in gratitude for its support and friendship over the last 10 years.

Mala K.S. Gunasekera (center) with Atlas’s Colleen Dyble (left) andher daughter Priyanya Boschmans (right), during one on of theexcursions at The Atlas Experience in Canada

Chinese Hayek Society

The Chinese Hayek Society (CHS) was estab-lished in August 2005 by 30 scholars from

mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Its goalis to create a forum for the exchange of ideas onthe thought of Hayek and other liberal thinkers inthe context of Chinese culture. Since its incep-tion, CHS has successfully conducted three annualconferences and runs a training program with sev-eral universities. Nearly 300 participants—most ofthem either graduates or journalists from nationalpublications—attended the seminars in Beijing,Shanghai, and Shenzhen. CHS has also organizedthe translation and publication of A Series ofAustrian Economics with includes many Austrianclassics. CHS is in the process of creating a Website on Austrian economics and is working to pub-lish its first journal by the end of 2007.




Institute Profile

Established Institute Profile:Lion Rock Institute (Hong Kong)

I n Hong Kong, vouchers are being introduced to non-profit private schools at the kindergarten level. In the

coming year, the Lion Rock Institute will be workingto advocatethe extensionof vouchers tofor-profitschools and tothe wholeschool systemat large. LionRock is alsolaunching acampaign tocounter a pro-posed “FairCompetition” law, as well as a project to study the gov-ernment’s 2005 privatization of some car park andcommercial properties.

Reflections

I In honor of Milton Friedman, India’s Centre for Civil Society(CCS), launched a year-long school choice campaign. The pro-

gram’s goal is to bringawareness about schoolchoice to a majority of par-ents with children enrolledin state schools, as well as topolicy makers. To date, 408children have beenawarded CCS-sponsoredvouchers; 150,000 morestudents have applied. CCSis holding informationmeetings, letter writingcampaigns, and even streetplays in almost every statein the country, encouragingparents to sign a petition,demanding the right tochoose their children’s school.

Action Research in Community Health and Development (India)

After a four-year campaign led by Trupti Mehta atAction Research in Community Health and

Development (ARCH), India’s government finallypassed legislation awarding property rights and permis-sion to use forest resources to indigenous groups inrural India. For years these tribal people have been in

an unstable position because of their lack of property rights. Trupti held acelebration of this victory in Taluk, Depiadpada state, which was attendedby thousands. Trupti first came into contact with Atlas through Anil andDaxe Patel, medical doctors, who, along with Trupti’s husband Ambrish,first realized the importance of promoting the ideas of a free society afterwitnessing a battle over the property rights and its impact on the poor.


On February 22, 2007, Trupti Mehta addressed thousands oftribal people gathered together to celebrate ARCH’s policy victory in Taluk, in India’s Dediapada state.

Peter Wong (left) and Riyad Hammad (right)before a panel discussion at the Atlas Experiencein Canada in August

During the Center for Civil Society’s Dehli cam-paign, the people demanded school choicevouchers.

“Fascism is asserting itself with full force inPakistan,” says Khalil Ahmad, founder andCEO of the AlternateSolutions Institute,who is working tocounter his country’sslide into authoritarian-ism. Currently, he isfocused on promotingrespect for the rule oflaw and the importanceof a strong judiciary,which are threatened in Pakistan at this time.He is also pushing for across-the-board privati-zation of state enterprises.

The Pragma Center, founded in Azerbaijan in 2002, with the mis-sion of being “analysts for free market, free society and freeworld.” The Center has published articles and papers, reaching60,000 readers, and has held seminars with 120 young partici-pants. This year, the Pragma Center staged a protest against thegovernment’s persecution of journalists.



20 Years with Atlas


In October 1987, when Antony G. A. Fisher – or AGAF ashe was known – entrusted me with the future of the AtlasEconomic Research Foundation, he only made two requests, inaddition to the obvious philosophical and mission issues. First,that a San Francisco office was to remain open as long asAntony was able to actively contribute to Atlas. Second, that onhis passing his dear wife, Dorian, was to join the Atlas Board. Ireadily agreed to both. And I kept both promises.

To give you the full story, Antony started Atlas in 1981 as ahub both for the network of six independent free-market insti-tutes which he helped start and for the growing queue of“wannabe institute entrepreneurs” knocking on his door. Ourpaths crossed several times in London at the Institute ofEconomic Affairs (IEA, United Kingdom) and at many eventsin California when I lived in Menlo Park during 1982-1985,working on the staff of the Institute for Humane Studies(IHS, United States). In 1985, Leonard Liggio, WalterGrinder and I moved IHS to George Mason University(GMU) in Virginia, at the urging of the IHS Board andguided by Professor Richard Fink.

Two years later, in the summer of 1987, Antony called me toask if I could find somebody to replace him. At that time,

Atlas had an annual income of $250,000, of which 60 percentwas restricted. The office consisted of a small two-room suite.In the front was a full-time secretary, and, in the back, Antony(part-time) and a young Argentine, Alejandro (“Alex”)Chafuen, who was technically part-time but unceasing in hisefforts to take the Atlas vision to Latin America.

As the summer wore on, none of my suggestions worked out.Indeed, when I found a retired, free-market attorney whoplayed golf every afternoon, Antony refused to talk to him.“What frivolity!” he thought. AGAF was so intensely focusedthat he never read a novel or watched TV. His idea of funwas to have Dorian read to him aloud articles which sheclipped from the papers every day.

That July, Antony invited me to speak at an Atlas workshop inIndianapolis, prior to the September 1987 Mont PelerinSociety (MPS) Regional Meeting. I agreed, envisaging a 30-minute speech with 15 minutes for Q&A. After realizing thatI would be on a panel with Antonio Marino and Hernando deSoto with only 30 minutes for all three of us, I decided to skipthe speech. Instead, I wrote a paper, mailed it to all the atten-dees, and just took Q&A.

This paper was Fund Raising for the Free Society, which hassince gone through several print runs and is still on the AtlasWeb site (www.AtlasUSA.org) under Think Tank FAQ -Fundraising. It has been very gratifying over the ensuing 20

John Blundell speaks on his 20-year long relationship with Atlas, which started in the summer of 1987.

By John Blundell, Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, Atlas Board Member and former Atlas President

John Blundell finds Sir Antony Fisher’s name (F/O, Flying Officer A. G. A.Fisher) on the Battle of Britain Monument along the River Thames, nearBig Ben.

John Blundell with Lord Ralph Harris of High Cross in 1991


years to hear how useful the paperhas been to the people in the Atlasnetwork.

The paper impressed Antony somuch that he started to consider meas his potential heir at Atlas. At thispoint, the soon-to-be-retired head ofthe IEA, Ralph Harris, Lord Harris ofHigh Cross, pointed out two things.First, that San Francisco was a rottenplace to base a truly internationalorganisation. Atlas was there onlybecause it was home to Antony’s sec-ond wife, Dorian, whose stunningapartment overlooking the Bay (fabu-lous for entertaining donors) andgenerosity were pivotal in establish-ing Atlas. Ralph argued that withAntony stepping back, there were bet-ter locations to consider. Second,Ralph said that being president ofAtlas was not a full-time job for ayoung, active man such as myself.

The three of us met several times during the week of the MPSmeeting, and I returned to IHS with the proposal that I wouldbecome part-time president of an Atlas office relocated to joinIHS at GMU. At that time, I was executive vice president &COO of IHS, soon to become president & CEO.

I discussed the proposal with my colleagues, Leonard Liggioand Walter Grinder, and with my Executive Committee,namely Charles G. Koch, the late J.P. (“Jay”) Humphreys,Harry H. Hoiles, and William (“Bill”) L. Law. To ensurethere were no problems, several Atlas Board members joinedthe IHS Board and vice versa. From the IHS side, Art Pope,George Pearson, Walter Grinder and Frank O’Connell movedonto the Atlas Board while Bill Sumner, Dorian Adams andTim Browne joined the IHS Board.

Antony died on the 8th of July 1988, just weeks after he wasknighted. By early September, we closed the tiny West Coastoffice and moved Atlas’s assets and the Chafuen family tonorthern Virginia. Dorian had been voted onto the AtlasBoard and Bill Sumner had replaced Antony as Chairman. Ithad already become clear that having an Atlas presence onthe East Coast was vastly superior, as it was much easier to getto relevant events and to welcome both foreign and U.S.-based visitors.

There were also great synergies between IHS and Atlas. Bothwere definitely not think tanks but rather in the business offinding and developing good market-oriented talent. In thecase of IHS, it was scholars and intellectuals; in the case ofAtlas, intellectual entrepreneurs. And both operated world-wide. With crucial input from Leonard Liggio, WalterGrinder, and others such as Jeremy F. G. Shearmur, we madehundreds of useful links that benefited both networks.

Upon first look, the Atlas staff stayed small, but it actuallygrew significantly. IHS then had a staff of about 15, all ofwhom were able to help Atlas. To keep things orderly, wecharged IHS staff time out on an hourly basis. With Atlas’snew 15 part-time helpers, including Sheldon Richman,Margo Reeves, Andrea Jardine and Vonda Holliman, activitiessurged. Then I added my first Atlas hire, Jo Kwong, whojoined me in 1990. It had taken five years for us to conductthe first six Atlas workshops. We did 10 in the next 36 months,seven of which were international.

One of my earliest decisions had been to make Alejandro full-time; I soon thereafter named him director of AdvisoryProgrammes worldwide and then vice president. When Istepped down as president in May 1991 to become presidentof the Charles G. Koch and Claude R. Lambe Foundations,the board took less than 30 seconds to decide that Alex shouldbe the next president.

The new location, board, infusion of talent and momentumestablished by Antony all contributed to growth in theresources available to Atlas. In 1990, our income rose to $2million. The number of institutes in our network, whichstarted at six in 1981 and had risen to 30 by the time Antonydied, was now at 75, with 18 workshops completed and hun-dreds of alumni.

Looking back, the three most important things in the growthof Atlas were the great Atlas/IHS synergies, the surge of work-shops and the benefits of the East Coast location. Antonywould be pleased and proud of all that Atlas has achieved overthe past two decades.

In 1993, Atlas invited the Fisher Award winners to attend Atlas’s 20th International Workshop. (Left to Right)Sally Pipes (Pacific Research Institute), Sam Staley (Buckeye Institute), Atlas trustee, Linda Whetstone withAtlas president, Alex Chafuen, John Goodman (National Center for Policy Analysis), and John Blundell(accepting award on behalf of Institute of Economic Affairs, Health and Welfare Unit).

John Blundell is director general and Ralph Harris Fellow of theInstitute of Economic Affairs (United Kingdom), the first of the “FisherInstitutes,” and serves on the board of Atlas and on its ExecutiveCommittee as chair of the Institute Development Committee.”


Few benefactors have been as loyal and helpful to theAtlas Economic Research Foundation as Gordon and BeattieSt. Angelo. Earlier this year, Gordon’s kind and generouswife, Beattie, passed on to a better world. Despite this tremen-dous loss, Gordon has remained actively involved insupporting the spread of freedom around the world.

Atlas first came in touch with Gordon in 1986, thanks to a let-ter from Walter Williams to Antony Fisher and to Gordon,indicating that a meeting would be mutually beneficial.Gordon was then a major champion of market-oriented phil-anthropic efforts at the Lilly Endowment. After leaving Lilly,Gordon and Beattie remained personal supporters of Atlas’sefforts.

On October 30, 2007, friends from around the Americas andthe world gathered in Indianapolis to celebrate Gordon St.Angelo’s legacy of leadership. His lifetime of service and dedi-cation to Indianapolis and Central Indiana, as well as hiscommunity and charitable work with the Lilly Endowment,Indianapolis Airport Authority, University of Indianapolis,Second Presbyterian Church, and Milton and Rose D.Friedman Foundation, enjoyed the immense support of hisspouse and ultimate friend, Beattie.

His life, rich in generosity, was always open to individualsfrom across the political spectrum. This was evident in thewide array of people who gave tribute to him during this cele-bration, including Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, Rose

Friedman, former “Dateline NBC” anchor Jane Pauley, for-mer U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton, Rep. Mike Pence, and formerIndianapolis mayors, Stephen Goldsmith and Bill Hudnut.

Gordon and Beattie, apart from being a support for Atlas, havebeen a personal example to me and my family in many ways.They showed us how to live a full life in all fronts and stillmaintain a unity of spirit and commitment until the end. Iwill always long to emulate their example, and hopefully, sowill our sons.

To them, all we can say is, “How can we ever say ‘thank you’enough?”

Join the Atlas Club!T he people who contribute to the Atlas Club are vital to our efforts. Their

annual pledges of $1,000 or more helps us budget our resources and planeffectively as we take the message of freedom to the corners of the globe. Theirstrong commitment to Atlas helps make our vision a reality.

In addition, Atlas Club sponsors get to know Atlas, and its many partners, on amore personal level. They receive invitations to all events, including the exclusiveAtlas Club Briefings. These private gatherings feature personal, up-close opportu-nities to meet our dedicated international partners in liberty.

Each year’s members are honored on a plaque at Atlas’s office in Arlington. Inaddition to this recognition, Atlas sponsors have the satisfaction of knowing theyare investing in ground-level efforts to promote freedom around the world.

Atlas Club Briefings give exclusive opportuni-ties to Atlas Club members. Sebestyen L.V.Gorka of the Institute for TransitionalDemocracy and International Security(Hungary) and Barun Mitra of the LibertyInstitute (India) spoke at this briefing in 2006.

A Tribute to Gordon &Beattie St. Angelo

By Alejandro A. Chafuen, President & CEO

Atlas president, Alex Chafuen with Beattie and Gordon St. Angelo at Atlas’s10th Anniversary celebration in 1991.

Cradled in my arms, little as she is, it is hard to believethat one day she will grow up, chase her own dreams, and navi-gate the challenges of the mid-to-late 21st century. I am talkingabout my daughter, Morgan Juliet Lips,born this past June.

During one of our first nights together, Iwas on 3:00 AM bottle duty, learning theart of burping. Squirming as I lifted herup and agitated until I got the desiredresult, she came to relax on my shoulder.That’s when I had a “parenting epiphany”that I bet you can relate to.

With her little head buried in my neck, Irealized how precious this moment was,and how fondly I’d look back upon it inthe future. Suddenly, that future becamea very real concern to me. What difficul-ties will she face in her life? Will she havethe opportunity to pursue her dreams? Ifher head is back on my shoulder yearsfrom now -- during a dance at her wedding – will she realize howmuch I have wanted her to enjoy life to its fullest?

Ever since arriving at Atlas, I have known that I am contributingto a better future – one that will be more peaceful, prosperous,and hopeful, because it will be more free. But becoming a par-

ent has made my work at Atlas more meaningful. Morgan’sfragile little features are a daily reminder of how many miracleswe experience in our lives. She has made me realize that my

wishes and worries about the future areshared by people all over the world.

I want my daughter to grow up in a worldwhere she can achieve anything she setsher mind to and is willing to work towards.I do not want her dreams and opportuni-ties limited by arbitrary decisions made bypeople in power. I want her to live insafety, and find friendship with people ofall backgrounds. And I want her to appre-ciate the many sacrifices that have beenmade to keep the liberty she enjoys aliveand to cherish the ideas and values thatcontribute to a healthy, free society.

Isn’t that what we want for people every-where? Isn’t that why you and I supportAtlas? Isn’t that why we are striving to

advance freedom around the world?

What a wonderful blessing she has been to my life. So many ofmy hopes and dreams while working at Atlas over the lastdecade have been abstract. Now they have a face and a name–she’s called Morgan.


Creating a Better Future

Investments of $1,000, $5,000, or $10,000 go a long way in the international arena. For example:

• A $1,000 gift could help fund the translation of a book about liberty, so it canreach and potentially impact opinion leaders, government decision makers andothers, many times over, creating long-term change!

• A $5,000 gift can sponsor a think tank’s operations – sometimes for an entire year – in remote parts ofthe globe. In one instance, Atlas “bought out” the annual salary of a prospective think tanker in Africawith a $5,000 grant. That grant covered his prior $2,000 per year salary and provided and additional$3,000 to run the institute. Now that’s bang for the buck!

• And a $10,000 gift can enable us to host an international conference where we can meet more pio-neers to join our efforts to create a society of free and responsible individuals.

Please join the Atlas Club today! Become an integral part of Atlas’s network of brave freedom fighters bycontributing $1,000 or more each year. Simply return the reply envelope that accompanies this newslet-ter or sign up online at www.atlasusa.org/donate. We look forward to hearing from you!

By Brad Lips, Executive Vice President & COO


Growth brings its special set of challenges. InAtlas’s case, the annual Liberty Forum now attracts sev-eral hundred idea entrepreneurs, supporters, andfriends. These numbers yield terrific benefits, particu-larly from the perspectives of both networking andprogram efficiency. Yet the nature of the program isvastly different from the smaller workshops of Atlas’s ear-lier days.

To offer something a little different this year, Atlas heldits first Atlas Experience to provide a smaller, more inti-mate gathering in a world-class setting. During thefirst week of August, 120 people participated in theinaugural Experience at the Queens Landing Inn andConference Center in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.I’m very pleased to tell you that it achieved everythingwe hoped for and more!

The relaxed setting offered a unique opportunity forAtlas friends and supporters to gather with idea entre-preneurs from over 30 different countries. As one newdonor commented:

I’ve been to Atlas’s Freedom Dinner and had agood sense of Atlas’s mission. But it wasn’tuntil I came to the Atlas Experience anddined, conversed and visited with the ideaentrepreneurs that I really became hooked inthe freedom vision!

In developing this new program, I had hoped to recre-ate one of my favorite Atlas memories, from manyyears ago. About 50 Atlas friends gathered at an inter-national workshop in Switzerland, only a block awayfrom the very same hotel that was the venue of the firstMont Pelerin Society (MPS) meeting in 1947. (MPS isan international association of classical liberals startedby F.A. Hayek.)

We arranged to hold one session at this hotel, whichturned out to be a delightful setting. Sitting in theEuropean parlor of this grand old hotel, with its highceilings, Victorian curtains and comfy armchairs, wegathered around as Atlas’s beloved Leonard Liggio told,firsthand, the history of MPS. As we listened toLeonard’s encyclopedic storytelling, there was a won-derful feeling of kinship. You couldn’t help butwonder if that very chair you were sitting in was onceoccupied by Hayek or Milton Friedman—or whetherthat very room was the site of the first MPS discussion.As one participant, Kevin Avram, said “As we sat andlistened to Leonard, I felt I was part of something veryhistoric, very special.”

Jo Kwong with husband, Richard Echard, Walter LeCroy and Andrea Rich at a vineyard.

Atlas president, Alex Chafuen led an after dinner discussion asking the question, “Are wewinning or are we losing in the fight for freedom?” Participants from around the worldshared experiences from the “front line” of this battle.

The unique setting allowed for conversations to continue between activities.

Connector and Catalyst: T


For me, that memory helped to inspire the AtlasExperience. In addition to traditional panels—cover-ing topics from “Returning to Limited Government inthe Americas” to “Can Technology Set us Free?”—wehosted four “economic salons,” complete with comfyarmchairs and intimate tables for two. Of course, theEconomic Salon led by Leonard Liggio was standingroom only— even though it was held at 10pm, afterthe dinner speech by Mart Laar, former PrimeMinister of Estonia.

The other economic salons featured JaroslavRomanchuk from Belarus and Alexandros Mantikasfrom Greece, who shared their personal insights aboutthe freedom challenges in their countries. The CatoInstitute’s David Boaz delivered a moving final salonon “How to Keep Making Progress Towards Freedom,”which helped create yet another memory to inspirefuture Atlas Experiences.

For those who didn’t get to the salons on time,impromptu discussions and gatherings offered interest-ing alternatives. I use “interesting” carefully…todescribe the unexpected bagpipe serenade fromCanada’s Brian Crowley, accompanied by Atlas’s ownIrish dancer, Alexis Serote.

Christopher Summers, founder of the Maryland PublicPolicy Institute, said:

The small informal and intimate gatheringsare invaluable – especially with our friends inthe free-market community from other coun-tries. By keeping these colloquia small, Atlasdoes an exceptional job at ensuring they’re pro-ductive and at the same time lively.

The Niagara-on-the-Lake setting offered ample oppor-tunity to build friendships—during excursions toNiagara Falls, winery tours, or jet ski adventures. Eventhe children who attended had a great time. We’vesince had requests for family excursions at the nextgathering.

As our movement has grown, so has the size of ourmeetings. Though this is indeed terrific, I treasurethese more intimate times where we might arrive asstrangers, but surely leave as friends. At the AtlasExperience, we welcomed friends who share a commit-ment to seek freedom for people everywhere.

Atlas’s Leonard Liggio led an economic salon on the “Revival of the Classical LiberalMovement.”

After a late-night economic salon, Brian Crowley of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studiesdelighted everyone by playing the bagpipes!

Annemie DeWinter of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (Jordan) laughs with other par-ticipants during dinner.

The Atlas Experience .By Jo Kwong, Vice President of Institute Relations


The Atlas (Left to Right) Marsha Enright of Reason, Individualism & Freedom Institute(Illinois) with panelist June Arunga of Open Quest Media, LLC (New York)and Atlas’s Andrea Millen Rich.

(Left to Right) Hernán Alberro (Argentina), Lubos Mikuska (Slovakia),Atlas’s Yiqiao Xu, Alexandros Mantikas (Greece) and Pedro Dájer(Dominican Republic) at Niagara Falls

Atlas’s Alexis Serote and Alex Chafuen show off their Irish dancing skillswhile Brian Lee Crowley of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies(Canada) plays the bagpipes after a late-night economic salon.

Atlas’s Deroy Murdock (left) with Howard Rich (center) and Andrew Royce

Martha Lewis, Chuck Albers, Gerald Fickenscher and Julie Planck dur-ing a pre-dinner reception

Jaroslav Romanchuk and Tom Palmer (center) with Justin, a 16-year-oldhotel employee who shared his passion for Ayn Rand with Tom and wasinvited to attend the rest of the conference.

The Atlas The inaugural Atlas Experience created an intimate, world-

class setting for supporters of freedom to gather, relax,

indulge their intellects and be inspired at a unique intersec-

tion of great thinkers, great discussion and great memories.

Atlas board member, Dan Grossman, speaks with Atlas's Leonard Liggio (left).

23Atlas c Year-in-Review 2007

ExperienceParticipants enjoyed meeting each other while going on wine tours at two ofNiagara-on-the-Lake’s vineyards, including the Jackson-Triggs Winery.

Cheers! Friends new and old gathered together to promote freedom.

(Left to Right) Kris Mauren, Walter LeCroy and Ben Rast with his sons,Greg and John

Experience-

Over 120 participants from over 30 different countries and

20 different states—representing over 50 different insti-

tutes—attended the event. Please visit the Atlas Web site

for a detailed report and more photos.

Diana Spencer and Riyad Hammad in the hotel garden

Alberto Mingardi of the Istituto Bruno Leoni (Italy) and Edita Maslauskaiteof the Lithuanian Free Market Institute

Some of the Atlas staffers, (left to right) Whitney Garrison, Colleen Dyble,Elena Ziebarth, Alexis Serote, Becca Waskey and Cindy Cerquitella.

Atlas's Allegra Hewell with Hernán Alberro of CADAL (Argentina)


“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom

must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

— Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

The words of Thomas Paine are enduring indeed.Fortunately, I’m confident that Atlas’s friends and contributorsexperience enthusiasm and optimism, rather than fatigue, whenpartnering with Atlas to advance freedom around the world!And, thankfully, they recognize the importance of their finan-cial support in order to preserve and promote the blessings offreedom.

To further encourage this uplifting spirit of giving, it is mypleasure to introduce a new opportunity to support the causeof freedom—Atlas’s Fisher Society.

This legacy program is proudly named after two lifelong sup-porters of liberty: Atlas’s founder Sir Antony Fisher and hiswife, Dorian. Through their generosity — both in life anddeath — they created a legacy to help turn their lifelong com-mitments and ideals into a long-lasting investment.

Antony Fisher founded theAtlas Economic ResearchFoundation in 1981 afterplaying an important rolein launching several free-market public policy thinktanks, including theInstitute of EconomicAffairs (United Kingdom),Manhattan Institute (NewYork), National Center forPolicy Analysis (Texas), andPacific Research Institute(California).

The seed of Atlas’s found-ing can be traced to apublication that remainshighly influential to this day. In 1945, after reading the Roadto Serfdom by the distinguished Austrian economist FriedrichA. Hayek, Antony Fisher visited Professor Hayek at the LondonSchool of Economics, brimming with excitement over theirshared ideas. When Fisher mentioned that he planned acareer in politics to fight against the erosion of freedom he sawin a then-socializing Britain, Hayek advised otherwise. Hereminded Fisher of the short-term nature of politics, andinstead encouraged him to find a way to change the long-term

climate of opinion.

With Hayek’s advice in mind, Fisher began to explore the ideaof creating free-market think tanks to teach people how freemarkets, limited government, rule of law and private propertyrights foster opportunity and prosperity.

Thanks to Antony Fisher’s commitment to these ideas, and hisentrepreneurial strategy to advance them, today Atlas’s networkconsists of more than 200 organizations, spanning the world.Atlas’s annual Liberty Forum and various international work-shops comprise the largest international gatherings offree-market think tank leaders. There is always a tremendousenergy level at the workshops, as participants eagerly shareideas, opinions and strategies for “winning the battle” on thewar of ideas.

Although I may seembiased in my awe ofFisher’s dedication, I’m ingood company. For hisoutstanding service, Fisherwas knighted by QueenElizabeth II in 1988.

While Sir Antony Fisherwas the inspiration andpublic face behind Atlas’sfounding, Dorian wasevery bit his partner, pro-viding enthusiastic moraland practical support. AsLinda Fisher Whetstone,Dorian’s stepdaughter andAtlas trustee, said, “If

there were occasions when Dad got depressed by the chal-lenges, Dorian was always there to encourage him, positiveand cheerful, looking for solutions and prepared to put in thetime and effort to make it all happen.”

After Antony died in 1988, Dorian joined the Atlas Board andremained a faithful financial contributor to Atlas. Upon herdeath earlier this year, Dorian continued that generosity – toAtlas and to several other think tanks that Antony founded.This generous bequest creates a legacy for Dorian andAntony’s vision for a free society.

In honor of the Fishers’s dedication and commitment to Atlas,I am pleased to introduce the Fisher Society, which isdescribed further on the following page. Won’t you joinAntony and Dorian’s legacy by becoming a member of Atlas’sFisher Society?

Create a Legacy of FreedomIntroducing the Fisher Society

By Jo Kwong, Vice President of Institute Relations

Atlas founder, Antony Fisher at theFraser Institute in 1976

Dorian accepting Sir AntonyFisher’s knighthood in 1988.


The Atlas Economic Research Foundation is proud toannounce the Fisher Society in honor of its founder, SirAntony Fisher, and his wife, Dorian. Antony Fisher envi-sioned a society of free andresponsible individuals. Today,Atlas and its network of hundreds ofthink tanks are the beneficiaries ofhis lifelong devotion and action.

If you share Sir Antony’s vision,Atlas invites you to join the FisherSociety. Won’t you partner with usto carry on your vision and valuesthrough future financial planning?

Fisher Society Members believeardently in Atlas’s mission toadvance freedom around the world.They have taken the financial andlegal steps necessary to ensure thatAtlas will be helping intellectualentrepreneurs promote the ideas ofliberty for many years to come.

Do you have a will that distributes your assets in line withyour values and priorities? If these priorities include advanc-ing liberty, please consider joining the Fisher Society byincluding Atlas as a beneficiary of your will or living trust.

If you have already added Atlas as a beneficiary of your estate,please let us know so we can recognize your generosity anddedication to our shared principles of a free society.

In joining the Fisher Society, by leaving Atlas as a beneficiaryin your will, there are several different ways to structure giftsto Atlas that may be well-suited to your own situation. Theseinclude:

• Planned giving options to protect your current income needs– Gift annuities and charitable remainder trusts are just twoof the options that allow you to give a large gift to Atlas,while ensuring that you and your loved ones enjoy uninter-rupted income.

• Donating appreciated securities – When you donate appre-ciated stock to Atlas, the full value of the gift is taxdeductible, allowing you to avoid paying taxes on the capi-tal gains.

• Donating from your IRA - If you are age 70½ or older, cur-rent legislation allows you to make cash gifts to qualifiedcharities such as Atlas, totaling up to $100,000 per yearfrom your traditional or Roth IRA, without incurringincome tax on the withdrawal. (Please note that the rele-

vant legislation, Pension Protection Act of 2006, onlyapplies to tax years 2006 and 2007.)

We recognize that your estate plan-ning is a very important, verypersonal process. Should Atlas beincluded in your plans, we viewthis as one of the highest privilegesof our partnership. We treasureyour generosity and are committedto honoring your donor intent.

PLEASE NOTE: This article is notintended as legal or financialadvice. Consult your own legal orfinancial advisor before making anydecision based on this information.If you already know that you wantto make a planned gift or any othercontribution to Atlas, please contactJo Kwong, at 703-934-6969 [email protected].

Dorian and Antony Fisher at the 1980 Mont PelerinSociety meeting at the Hoover Institute.

How You Can Advance FreedomThe Fisher Society: Fostering a Positive Vision of Tomorrowby Creating a Legacy Today

Sample Bequest Language[ Please have your attorney review ]

I give, devise and bequeath to the

Atlas Economic Research

Foundation, tax identification

number 94-2763845, 2000 North

14th

Street, Suite 550, Arlington,

Virginia 22201, [insert amount,

percentage, or remainder of estate]

to be used for general operations

[or a donor-designated purpose].


2007 Libe 2007 Libe Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ~

Atlas’s 7th annual Liberty Forum

attracted representatives from 120

public policy institutes from 52 coun-

tries and 26 states. The Liberty Forum

creates opportunities for “intellectual

entrepreneurs” and other allies to learn

and share best practices in manage-

ment and leadership strategies. Over

270 participants were able to explore

(Left to Right) Paulo Coelho and Vicente Perrone, TempletonFreedom Award winners from the Instituto de EstudosEmpresariais (IEE, Brazil), with Atlas’s Rómulo Lopez

Atlas’s Paul Driessen (left) with Masaru Uchiyama, the founderof Japanese for Tax Reform (Courtesy of Sinagoga Photography)

(Left to Right) Kerry Hardy of Altermind (France), NigelAshford of the Institute for Humane Studies and Atlas’sGeorge Pearson (Courtesy of Sinagoga Photography)

(Left to Right) Gerardo Bongiovanni of Fundación Libertad(Argentina), Atlas’s Gabriel Sanchez-Zinny and Brad Lips,Hans Tippenhauer of Fondation Espoir (Haiti), and PaulAdepelumi of the African Center for Advocacy and HumanDevelopment (Nigeria) (Courtesy of Sinagoga Photography)

(Left to Right) Atlas’s Alex Chafuen with Nona Patrick andDaniel Córdova of Invertir (Peru) and Atlas’s ChristianRobey (Courtesy of Sinagoga Photography)


e rty Forum rty Forum ~ April 24-26, 2007 .

ideas, network with new partners and

develop future collaborations for

advancing the ideas of liberty and free

markets. Just as importantly, the Liberty

Forum provided its participants with

the encouragement, inspiration and

energy necessary to apply the principles

they have learned to continue to fight

for freedom in their home countries.

Franklin Cudjoe of IMANI Center for Policy and Education(Ghana) holding a “Let Freedom Reign” banner

Frayda Levy of the Moving Picture Institute (left, New York)and Alexandra Stocker (Courtesy of Sinagoga Photography)

(Left to Right) Edwin Thompson of the Ayn Rand Institute(New York), Atlas’s Alex Chafuen and keynote dinnerspeaker John Allison, CEO of BB&T (Courtesy of SinagogaPhotography)

(Left to Right) Andrew Work, Wallace Chan and Simon Lee ofthe Lion Rock Institute (Hong Kong)

(Left to Right) Atlas’s Gabriel Sanchez-Zinny with Hamood Al-Towaiya and Amb. Hunaina Sultan Al-Mughairy (Embassy ofthe Sultanate of Oman, Washington, D.C.) and MelanieChafuen (Courtesy of Sinagoga Photography)


Friends of Atlas will be familiar with the story of howAntony Fisher, inspired by F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom,began starting free-market think tanks to revive classical liberalideas. But, of course, this was only one part of an intellectualbattle against the welfare statism and militarism that achieveddominance during the 1930s.

President Herbert Hoover saw that American traditions rootedin classical liberalism would be threatened by the election ofFranklin Delano Roosevelt and the subsequent New Deal. Ashe left the presidency in February 1933, Hoover declared:

The American people will soon be atthe fork of three roads. The first is thehighway of cooperation amongnations, thereby to remove the obstruc-tions to world consumption and risingprices. This road leads to real stability,to expanding standards of living, to aresumption of the march of progress byall peoples…The second road is to relyupon our high degree of national self-containment, to increase our tariffs, tocreate quotas and discriminations, andto engage in definite methods of cur-tailment of productions of agriculturaland other products and thus to securea large measure of economic isolationfrom world influences…The third roadis that we inflate our currency, conse-quently abandoning the gold standard,and with our depressed currencyattempt to enter a world economicwar; with the certainty that it leads tocomplete destruction, both at homeand abroad (Department of State,Press Releases, VIII February 18,1933, 117.).

Roosevelt’s New Deal took the second and third roads, curtail-ing agricultural production and inflating the currency byabandoning the gold standard. I place the beginning of therevival of classical liberalism in America in 1937, followingFDR’s landslide re-election, just when it seemed like classicalliberalism and free market ideas were buried forever. Already,the New Deal had stolen the name “liberalism” and given it tothe regulatory state.

The revival was an unintended consequence of Roosevelt’soverreaching. Supremely confident in the wake of his land-slide victory, FDR promoted a court-packing scheme to allowhim to appoint an additional justice to the Supreme Court fora sitting justice who was over 70 years old. The nine old menof the Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional many ofthe corporatist laws passed during FDR’s first term. But theSenate rejected the plan, having heard from tens of thousandsof citizens who were mobilized by the Committee forConstitutional Government, which was funded by publisherLewis Gannett of Rochester, New York.

During this decade, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce,then headed by Leonard Read, emerged as an important cen-ter of classical liberal ideas. In 1932, Read visited Hoover’sformer chief-of-staff, William C. Mullendore, who convincedhim of the fallacy of government planning (Mullendore wasthen the head of the Southern California Edison power com-pany). Read began the publication Freeman Pamphleteers,which collected critiques of government intervention by classi-cal liberal writers such as Henry Hazlitt.

As a New York Times editorial writer, Hazlitt provided soundeconomic analysis, until his critique of the postwarInternational Monetary Fund led to his dismissal. He thenbegan writing a column for Newsweek, in which he was suc-ceeded years later by Milton Friedman. When the greatAustrian economist Ludwig von Mises arrived in New York as arefugee in 1940, it was Hazlitt who welcomed him and intro-duced him to Leonard Read.

Other American publishers established important legacies inspreading free-market ideas. In Idaho, a publishing companybegan to reprint classical liberal books under the Caxtonimprint. In New York, Devin Garrity added classical liberaltitles to the Devin-Adair roster. In Chicago, Henry Regnerybegan his publishing enterprise. Not too far from Read’s homein Los Angeles, R.C. Hoiles published The Register in OrangeCounty, along with English translations of works by FredericBastiat. In 1943, Leonard Read republished Bastiat’s The Law.

Read established the Foundation for Economic Education(FEE) in 1946, and FEE published its own edition of The Lawin 1950, of which it has now distributed more than one million

The Revival of Classical Liberalism

By Leonard P. Liggio, Executive Vice President of Academics


copies. Ronald Reagan became a recipient of FEE publica-tions when he worked for General Electric in the 1950s (GEVice President Lemuel Bulware sat on FEE’s board), and citedThe Law as one of his favorite books.

A landmark event for the classical liberal movement occurredin 1944 with the University of Chicago Press’s publication ofF.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, a book that had beenturned down by many U.S. publishers, who dismissed it off asold-fashioned. Chicago economist, Aaron Director, proposedthe book to the University of Chicago Press, which accepted it,and it became a best-seller. As Henry Hazlitt wrote in The NewYork Times, it was ironic that “the most eminent…defenders ofEnglish liberty in America, should now be two Austrian exiles,”referring to Hayek and Mises, whose book OmnipotentGovernment (Yale University Press) also was published in 1944.

Hayek’s efforts, including a lecture tour, further invigoratedclassical liberalism in the United States. Hayek published inU.S. journals and in 1950 joined the faculty of the Committeeon Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Chicagobecame an intellectual, classical liberal powerhouse with suchluminaries as Frank Knight, Aaron Director, Milton Friedman,George Stigler, Allen Wallis, Yale Brozen, H. Gregg Lewis,Ronald Coase, and Harold Demsetz, as well as Hayek. Hayek,of course, had invited several of his future University ofChicago colleagues to a meeting at Mont Pelerin inSwitzerland in May 1947, which resulted in the formation ofthe Mont Pelerin Society, bringing together several prominentBritish, European, and American classical liberal intellectuals.

Other key elements in countering the trend toward socialismduring the 1940s included Ayn Rand’s bestselling novel, TheFountainhead, a tribute to individualism that became a suc-cessful Hollywood movie starring Gary Cooper. Other keybooks included Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences(Chicago, 1948), which emphasized the need to defend pri-vate property, and Russell Kirk’s Randolph of Roanoke(Chicago, 1951), a defense of constitutional decentralization.

The writer Albert Jay Nock, who died in 1945, had a profoundimpact on American classical liberalism, both through hisbooks and through his personal influence on Frank Chodorov,the editor of Human Events and The Freeman, and WilliamBuckley, the founding editor of National Review. In 1953,Chodorov and Buckley founded the Intercollegiate Society of

Individualists, the first classical liberal organiza-tion designed explicitly for college students.

As a student during this period myself, I bene-fited from the contributions of Ross Hoffmanand Paul Levack, my graduate professors atFordham University. They founded the BurkeSociety at Fordham in 1945, and edited ananthology of the works of Edmund Burke, not-ing in their introduction, “Never have [Burke’s]great maxims been more contemptuouslyignored than during the catastrophic last half-century…It has been an age of doctrinaire‘planning,’ or as Burke would have said, of‘scheming.’ Its political leaders have forgottenthe natural law.”

We owe a debt of gratitude to the scholars and intellectualentrepreneurs mentioned in this essay, who responded to thecatastrophes of the first half of the 20th century by reviving thegreat principles of liberty and building the educational institu-tions that help sustain our movement today.

Atlas’s Leonard Liggio addresses an audience at the George Mason University Law School during a reception given in his honor in March 2007 (see page 30).


On March 6, 2007, The AtlasEconomic Research Foundation, alongwith Liberty Fund and The Institute forHumane Studies (IHS), sponsored a recep-tion to honor Leonard Liggio and celebratehis lifetime of service and dedication to theideas of liberty and to the freedom move-ment. The event also served as theoccasion to premiere Liberty Fund’sIntellectual Portrait film, “A Conversationwith Leonard Liggio.” In this 95-minutefilm, Leonard is interviewed by JohnBlundell, Atlas board member and directorgeneral of the Institute of Economic Affairs(London, UK).

Leonard is currently servingas executive vice presidentof the Atlas EconomicResearch Foundation, dis-tinguished senior scholar atIHS, and board member ofthe Liberty Fund. He is aresearch professor at theGeorge Mason UniversitySchool of Law and trustee ofthe Philadelphia Society.Leonard is also former pres-ident of the Mont PelerinSociety and is now servingas vice president.

Over 120 guests attendedthe reception which washeld at the George MasonUniversity Law School inArlington, Virginia.During the celebration,Leonard’s friends and col-leagues shared stories andmemories of his great con-tributions to the free society. The speakersfor the evening were IHS president, MartyZupan, Liberty Fund president, ChrisTalley, Atlas president, Alex Chafuen,Heritage Foundation president, EdwinFeulner and Cato Institute vice presidentfor International Programs, Tom Palmer.

“Leonard is the Pied Piper of liberty.

We are so lucky to have this brilliant

scholar with a passion to spread the

ideas of liberty. Better, he is incredi-

bly effective in doing so. Young

people all over the globe have had

their lives changed because of

Leonard Liggio’s commitment and

dedication.”

– Ed Crane,

founder and

president of

Cato Institute

David Kennedy and the guest of honor,Leonard Liggio

Friends of Leonard Liggio, Jo Kwong (left),Walter Williams (center) and Richard Rahn.

Peter Boettke with the Liberty Fund’s“Conversation with Leonard Liggio DVD”

Alex Chafuen, president of Atlas EconomicResearch Foundation with David Townes(right)

Reception in Honor of Leonard Liggio


The Fund for the Study of SpontaneousOrders (FSSO), at the Atlas EconomicResearch Foundation, was established throughthe generosity of an anonymous donor. Thisprogram is designed to promote the Austrianperspective on economics, studying method-ological individualism in areas outside therealm of traditional academics.

In March, the Fund hosted a gala reception forover 80 people honoring Gordon Tullock forhis years of scholarship on spontaneous orders.Professor Tullock was presented with FSSO’sLifetime Achievement Award of $25,000. Overthe next two days, FSSO conducted a confer-ence to discuss his work.

In May, FSSO hosted a conference on theAustrian theory of the firm, which has seen arevival of interest during the past decade. Theconference sought to build upon this founda-tion by reviewing the theory of the firm,analyzing previous Austrian perspectives, andoffering new ways to explain business practicesby emphasizing the role of entrepreneurship,

shared knowledge, and institutions.

In October, FSSO held a conference inPortsmouth, New Hampshire, on “NewDirections in the Study of Emergent andSpontaneous Social Orders.” “Emergent” or“spontaneous order” has become an increas-ingly important concept in both the social andnatural sciences. The conference gatheredscholars interested in emergent order phenom-ena and strongly influenced by a Hayekianperspective, seeking to explore together sponta-neous order’s implications both for their ownwork and as a broader research paradigm.

Fund for the Study ofSpontaneous Orders

Mark Pennington, former FSSO $10,000 awardwinner with Wendy Purnell and KnudBerthelsen at the FSSO reception.

FSSO Lifetime Achievement Award winner, GordonTullock with Atlas’s Allegra Hewell (left) and CindyCerquitella (right).

Virgil Storr with Atlas senior fellow and director ofAtlas’s FSSO program, Bill Dennis.

Atlas’s Priscilla Tacujan withJack Sommer at the GordonTullock’s FSSO reception.

Three Academic Conferences• The Work of Gordon Tullock• The Revival of the Austrian Theory of the Firm• New Directions in the Study of Emergent and SpontaneousSocial Orders

Third Lifetime Achievement Award Given• Gordon Tullock (Featured in Highlights, Spring 2007)

Two $10,000 Awards Given• Christopher Coyne (Featured in Highlights, Spring 2007)• Peter LeesonFS

SO –

2007

In R

evie

w

In May, FSSOpresented its

13th $10,000 prizeto Dr. Peter T.Leeson, a scholarwho is applyingAustrian-based methodologicalindividualism to new areas ofresearch. Leeson was an assistantprofessor of Economics at WestVirginia University and is now theBB&T Professor for the Study ofCapitalism at the MercatusCenter at George MasonUniversity (Virginia). He is a pro-lific young scholar with over threedozen published journal articleson a number of topics and hasused a combination of historicalstudies and economic tools to ana-lyze real-world examples of privateproperty anarchism and relatedproblems of social organization.

Leeson, a Hillsdale Collegeundergraduate, earned his doctor-ate at George Mason University in2005. He has also studied atHarvard University and was the F. A. Hayek Fellow at the LondonSchool of Economics. He is anassociate scholar with theMackinac Center for PublicPolicy (Michigan) and is associateeditor of the Review of AustrianEconomics.

FSSO Presents its 13th

$10,000 Prize to Peter Leeson

32

Hellenic Leadership Institute (HLI, Greece) president,Anthony Livanios (holding award) celebrates with friendsafter receiving the Templeton Freedom Award forInitiative in Public Relations.

The 2006 SPECIAL THANKS TO

THE 2006 HOST

COMMITTEE:

DENYSE & TIMOTHY

BROWNE

JOHANNA &

DERWOOD CHASE

TIMOTHY E.

DONNER

DAN GROSSMAN

JORGE GERDAU

JOHANNPETER

KAREN & MICHAEL

NOVAK

GERRY OHRSTROM

D. JOSEPH OLSON

MENLO F. SMITH

ALEXANDRA &

MARSHALL STOCKER

WILLIAM O. SUMNER

JOHN M.

TEMPLETON, JR.

CHRISTOPHER

WALKER

WALTER E.

WILLIAMS

ANN & CURTIN

WINSOR

“Today’s radical thinking can becometomorrow’s reality…As we gather here

tonight, my Atlas colleagues and I urge you –our fellow friends of freedom – not to limityour thinking to what is possible or what the‘common wisdom’ says we should believe.We free thinkers should decide where soci-ety’s goals posts should be planted…Pleasedare to believe in the impossible, becausevery often, impossible dreams come true!”

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation held its annual celebration of World Freedom Day

at the Willard InterContinental Washington Hotel on November 16, 2006. Over 250 guests

gathered to celebrate the work of Atlas, and the efforts of the members of its network, to

advance freedom around the world. The evening included a keynote address by Charles

Heritage Foundation (Washington,DC) president, Edwin Feulner offersone of the three toasts to freedomduring the dinner.

Deroy Murdock Master ofCeremonies; Senior Fellow,Atlas Economic ResearchFoundation; Columnist,Scripps Howard News Service;Contributing Editor, NationalReview Online

Edward Crane, founder and presidentof the Cato Institute (Washington,DC), offers one of the toasts to free-dom during the Freedom Dinner.

Margaret Tse (left), CEO of the Instituto Liberdade(Brazil), and Dora de Ampuero (right), founder and exec-utive director of the Instituto Ecuatoriano de EconomiaPolitica (Ecuador)

33

Freedom DinnerSPECIAL THANKS TO

THE 2006 FREEDOM

DINNER SPONSORS:

PLATINUM CIRCLE

CHASE FOUNDATION

OF VIRGINIA

BRIDGET & BARRY

CONNER

DAN GROSSMAN

GOLD CIRCLE

DENYSE & TIMOTHY

BROWNE

THOR HALVORSSEN

J.P. HUMPHREYS

FOUNDATION

GERRY OHRSTROM

ANDREA & HOWARD

RICH

WILLIAM SUMNER

CHRISTOPHER

WALKER

ANN & CURTIN

WINSOR

SILVER CIRCLE

DONORSTRUST

THE FUND FOR

AMERICAN STUDIES

THE ROE

FOUNDATION

ALEXANDRA &MARSHALL STOCKER

JOHN M.TEMPLETON, JR.

Murray, W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; a tribute to Milton

Friedman by Atlas president, Alejandro Chafuen; and the presentations of the Freda Utley

Prize for Advancing Liberty (see page 38) and the Templeton Freedom Award for Initiative in

Public Relations (see pages 32-33). All photos are courtesy of Kulik Photography.

(Left to Right) Nat Moffat, Norma Zimdahl, Atlasboard member Abby Moffat and Josephine Pelletterwith Shirley and Marek Chodakiewicz at the reception

During the dinner, Atlas’s Jo Kwongpresented the 2006 Freda Utley Prizefor Advancing Liberty to PaataSheshelidze, president of the NewEconomic School – Georgia (NESG).

“We are not going to achieve the nextgreat movement toward liberty by

promising tax cuts. We are not going to do itby promising higher economic growth rates.We are not going to do it by economic argu-ments, period. Rather we are going to do itby convincing people that what is true oftheir own lives is also true of others’ lives.”Charles Murray Keynote

Speaker. W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (Washington, DC);Author of several books including Losing Ground (1984), In Pursuit: Of Happiness andGood Government (1989), What it Means to be a Libertarian (1997), and In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State (2006)

Fraser Institute Foundation(Canada) President Michael Walkeroffers the evening’s third toast tofreedom.

(Left to Right) Kerry Howley (Reason Magazine), JoannaRobinson (Acton Institute, MI), Mustafa Akyol (TurkishDaily News, Turkey) and Jay Richards (Acton Institute,MI) at the general reception



During the four years of the TempletonFreedom Awards Program, the Atlas EconomicResearch Foundation received 775 applications from83 countries. In 2007 alone, Atlas collected 200 appli-cations from 53 countries. The awards given throughthis program recognize organizations that can providehigh returns in the creation of intellectual capital. Inmost cases, the winners come from countries with littleexisting work on advancing freedom. Our programrecognizes think tanks working in the area of socialentrepreneurship, poverty alleviation, education, andvalues and morality.

As Atlas’s Yiqiao Xu and Brad Lips stated during theApril 2007 award ceremony at Atlas’s Liberty Forum,“the judges look for indicators of good governance,leadership, and operating procedures—factors thatassure us that steps are being taken to limit the risks ofinvestment. The result is a diverse portfolio of excit-ing, accomplished think tanks from around theworld.”

As an international program, the Templeton FreedomAwards face the challenge of assessing think tanksworking in very different settings. If you have achance to travel near one of Atlas’s TempletonFreedom Award-winning institutes, I hope that youwill contact and visit these groups. These organiza-tions serve as outposts and milestones in the pathtoward establishing and discovering the freedoms thatare so cherished by Atlas the John TempletonFoundation.

In our coming years, we will strive to help transformsome of the winning think tanks into regional hubs,working better with their neighboring countries andwith renowned policy leaders. The TempletonFreedom Awards seek to encourage think tanks to aimhigh and be humble, always trying to learn morewithout being afraid of making mistakes, ultimatelyleading to innovative ideas and policy solutions.

Templeton Freedom AwardsBy Alejandro A. Chafuen, President & CEO

• The 2007 TFA Winners, Liberty Forum 2007- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

• The 2006 TFA Winners, Liberty Forum 2006- Colorado Springs, Colorado

• The 2005 TFA Winners, Liberty Forum 2005- Miami, Florida

• The 2004 TFA Winners, Liberty Forum 2004- Chicago, Illinois

For his defense of freedom and dedication to liberty,Antony Fisher was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988,only weeks before he passed away. In 1990, through the gen-erosity of his relatives and friends, Atlas established the SirAntony Fisher International Memorial Awards to commemo-rate his ideals and achievements.The award recognizes independent public policy institutes

that have published a book, magazine, report, monograph, orstudy within the past two years that, in the opinion of thejudges, has made an outstanding contribution to the publicunderstanding of the free society.Winning institutes are announced at Atlas’s annual Liberty

Forum and financial prizes areawarded for their operating budgets.The winner of the Young Institutecategory (less than five years old)receives $10,000, the EstablishedInstitute (five years or older) winnerreceives $5,000, and the InnovativeProjects winner, $2,000. Due to an increase in the number

of applications—over 190 applications just in the last 3 years—Atlas has moved up the nomination deadline to December 1,2007, to allow more time for the judging process. Atlas wouldlike to thank all the judges that have contributed to the FisherAwards over the past 18 years (see back cover).


2007TaxPayers’ Alliance (U.K.): The

Bumper Book of Government Wasteby Matthew Elliott and Lee

Rotheram, 2007.

Institute of Economic Affairs(U.K.): The Welfare State We’re Inby James Bartholomew, 2007.

Polish Society ofEconomists (Poland):Which Way to Wealth

Creation?

2006Independent Institute

(U.S.): Liberty for Latin America:How to Undo Five HundredYears of State Oppression byAlvaro Vargas Llosa, 2005.

Scientific ResearchMises Center (Belarus):Belarus: Road to the Future,edited by Jaroslav Romanchukand Leonid Zaiko, 2005.

Fundación Friedrich A.Von Hayek (Argentina):Fundamental Rights and Legaland Institutional Order in Cuba

by Ricardo Rojas, 2005.

MaximInstitute (NewZealand): ParentFactor Reports.

2005Property and Environment

Research Center (U.S.): The Not SoWild, Wild West by Terry L. Anderson

and Peter J. Hill, 2004.

Instituto de CienciaPolitica (Colombia):Perspectiva magazine.

Fundación Fundar (Argentina):Fair Hand: A Reflection on PublicInsecurity and a Proposal to Solve the

Crisis by Eugenio Burzaco.

2004Property and Environment Research

Center (U.S.): Eco-Nomics: What EveryoneShould Know About Economics and the

Environment by Richard Stroup, 2003.

Centro de Investigaciones EconómicoNacionales (Guatemala): The Relationship BetweenEconomics and Social Policies 2004-2007, 2004.

2003Cato Institute (U.S.): Against the

Dead Hand: The Uncertain Strugglefor Global Capitalism by Brink

Lindsey, 2001.

Atlantic Institute forMarket Studies (Canada):Definitely NOT the Romanow

Report Health Care Project.

Instituto Libertad y Desarrollo(Chile): Ideas for a Quality Education,edited by María de los Angeles

Santander, 2002.

2002Center for Liberal-Democratic

Studies (Yugoslavia): Corruption inSerbia by Boris Begovic and Bosko

Mijatovic, 2001.

Timbro (Sweden):In Defense of GlobalCapitalism by Johan

Norberg, 2001.

Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (Canada):The Equalization Initiative [in cooperation with theFrontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada) and the

Institut Économique de Montréal (Canada).]

2001Liberty Institute

(India): Population:The UltimateResource, edited byBarun Mitra, 2000.

Instituto Libertad yDemocracia (Peru): The Mystery ofCapital: Why Capitalism Triumphsin the West and Fails EverywhereElse by Hernando de Soto, 2000.

Social Affairs Unit(U.K.): Dictionary ofDangerous Words by DigbyAnderson, 2000.

2000Association for Liberal Thinking

(Turkey): Islam, Civil Society, and MarketEconomy, edited by Atilla Yayla, 1999.

Independent Institute (U.S.): To Serveand Protect by Bruce L. Benson, 1998.

Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Awards


1999Unirule Institute (China):

The Future of Chinese Ethics byYushi Mao, 1997.

Fraser Institute (Canada): EconomicFreedom of the World Index by James

Gwartney and Robert Lawson, 1999.

1998

The BrookingsInstitution (U.S.): CurbRights: A Foundation forFree Enterprise in UrbanTransit by Daniel B. Klein,Adrian T. Moore andBinyam Reja, 1997.

Fundación de EstudiosEnergéticosLatinoamericanos(Argentina): SubsurfaceWealth: The Struggle forPrivatization in Argentina byGuillermo M. Yeatts, 1996.

1997National Center

for Policy Analysis(U.S.): Firing LinePublic Policy DebateProject, 1996.

Institute of EconomicAffairs, Health and WelfareUnit, now Civitas (U.K.):Community Without Politicsby David G. Green, 1996.

Atlantic Institute for MarketStudies (Canada): Looking the GiftHorse in the Mouth: The Impact ofFederal Transfers on Atlantic Canada

by Fred McMahon, 1996.

1996Locke Institute (U.S.): Trade

Protection in the U.S. by Charles K.Rowley, Willem Thorbecke and

Richard E. Wagner, 1995.

Independent Institute (U.S.): The Academy in Crisis: The PoliticalEconomy of Higher Education, edited

by John W. Sommer, 1995.

Cato Institute (U.S.):Simple Rules for AComplex World by Richard

A. Epstein, 1995.

1995Libertad y

Desarrollo (Chile):Today’s Tasks: Social andEconomic Policies for aFree Society, edited byCristian Larroulet, 1994.

Locke Institute(U.S.): Public Goods &Private Communities:The Market Provisionof Social Services byFred Foldvary, 1994.

1994

1993Institute of Economic Affairs, Health

& Welfare Unit, now Civitas (U.K.):Families Without Fatherhood by Norman

Dennis and George Erdos, 1993.

National Center for Policy Analysis(U.S.): Patient Power: Solving America’sHealth Care Crisis by John C. Goodman

and Gerald L. Musgrave, 1993.

Urban Policy Research Institute,now the Buckeye Institute (U.S.): DrugPolicy and the Decline of American Cities

by Sam Staley, 1992.

1992CEDICE (Venezuela):

Social Security inVenezuela by CarlosSabino and JesúsRodriguez Armas, 1992.

Hong Kong Centre forEconomic Research: InternationalTelecommunications in Hong Kongby Milton Mueller, 1992.

Political Economy ResearchCenter & Pacific Research Institutefor Public Policy (U.S.): Free MarketEnvironmentalism by Terry Anderson

and Donald Leal, 1991.

1991Centre for Independent

Studies (Australia): WelfareState or Constitutional State?

by Suri Ratnapala, 1990.

Fraser Institute (Canada):Economics and the Environment:AReconciliation, edited by Walter

E. Block, 1990.

1990Pacific Research Institute (U.S.):

Advertising and the Market Process byRobert B. Edelund, Jr., and David

Saurman, 1988.

Cato Institute (U.S.): TheEconomic Consequences ofImmigration by Julian L.

Simon, 1989.

Instituto Libertad y Democracia(Peru): The Other Path: The InvisibleRevolution in the Third World by

Hernando de Soto, 1989.

The ManhattanInstitute (U.S.): TheExcuse Factory: HowEmployment Law isParalyzing the AmericanWorkplace by Walter K.Olson, 1997.

IndependentInstitute (U.S.): TaxingChoice: The PredatoryPolitics of FiscalDiscrimination, editedby William F. ShughartII, 1997.

Cato Institute (U.S.):Perpetuating Poverty: TheWorld Bank, the IMF, andthe Developing World,edited by Doug Bandowand Ian Vásquez, 1994.

Future ofFreedomFoundation (U.S.):Separating School& State by SheldonRichman, 1994.

Independent Institute(U.S.): Beyond Politics:Markets, Welfare, and theFailure of Bureaucracy byWilliam C. Mitchell andRandy T. Simmons, 1994.

Locke Institute(U.S.): Property Rightsand the Limits ofDemocracy, edited byCharles K. Rowley,1993.

Social AffairsUnit (U.K.): TheLoss of Virtue,edited by DigbyAnderson, 1992.

Institute ofEconomic Affairs(U.K.): Federalismand Free Trade byJean-Luc Migué,1993.

Pacific ResearchInstitute (U.S.): GrandTheft and Petit Larceny:Property Rights inAmerica by Mark Pollot,1993.

Independent Institute(U.S.): Out of Work:Unemployment and Governmentin Twentieth-Century Americaby Richard Vedder and LowellGallaway, 1993.

Centro de Estudios Públicos(Chile): Combating Poverty: InnovativeSocial Reforms in Chile During the

1980s by Tarsicio Castañeda, 1990.

Reason Foundation(U.S.): Revolution at theRoots: Making OurGovernment Smaller,Better, and Closer toHome by WilliamEggers and JohnO’Leary, 1995.

Institute of Economic Affairs,Environment Unit (U.K.): GlobalWarming: Apocalypse or Hot Air? by

Roger Bate and Julian Morris, 1994.

Heartland Institute (U.S.): Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide ToEnvironmentalism by J. L. Bast, Peter

J. Hill and Richard C. Rue, 1994.

Competitive EnterpriseInstitute (U.S.): The TrueState of the Planet, edited by

Ronald Bailey, 1995.


The Freda Utley Prize for AdvancingLiberty, launched three years ago, is namedfor the late Freda Utley, an outspokenwriter and commentator against totalitar-ian regimes like the Soviet Union andChina. This $10,000 prize rewards thecourage and efforts of think tanks indifficult regions of the world that havebeen most effective in disseminatinginformation and promoting the ideasof freedom—economic freedom, lim-ited government, rule of law and thedignity of the individual.

The winner of the 2006 Utley Prize wasthe New Economic School - Georgia(NESG). NESG is first free market andpublic policy research think tank in wholeSouthern Caucasus. It was founded in 2001to disseminate and promote free-market ideasand policy solutions, opposing the old-fashionedMarxian-Keynesian ideology prevalent in the regionfrom Soviet times. NESG facilitates social change by educatingyoung, future leaders and current opinion makers.

Since its founding, NESG has held 45 local seminars and 27international conferences promoting freedom in education,philosophy, speech and other issues. NESG has also organ-

ized summer camps on “Lessons of Liberty.”Altogether, over 2,300 people have attended

NESG’s seminars to date.

As one prize judge commented: “NESG concentrates on training andeducating bright young people, whichis always the best way of having long-term impact. By teaching them howto use free markets to solve their ownproblems and as well as commonproblems, they…will instill a freemarket attitude in these young folksforever. And each convert should be

able to have influence on many morepeople. These are an extraordinary

group of people who are doing greatthings for the world, and by recognizing

them, from Washington, Atlas will no doubtgive them a tremendous morale boost in what

are often difficult circumstances. Congratulationsfor doing this.”

The first winner of this prestigious honor was the Associationof Liberal Thinking (ALT) of Ankara, Turkey in 2005. Atlaswill announce the 2007 Freda Utley Prize winner, selected byour distinguished independent panel of judges, at this year’sFreedom Dinner in Washington D.C., on November 6, 2007.

Freda Utley Prize

While the formal presentation oflast year’s Freda Utley Prize

occurred at Atlas’s Freedom Dinner inWashington D.C., Atlas also presentedthis prize to NESG in Tbilisi, Georgiaduring an NESG event. At the awardannouncement, Atlas’s Brad Lipsremarked:

“NESG recognizes that the long-termhealth of Georgia depends on cultivat-ing leaders who respect the principles ofindividual liberty, free enterprise andlimited government constrained by therule of law. The organization hasplayed a heroic role in building a net-work of young people in Georgia andthe Southern Caucasus who are dedi-cated to these fundamental ideals.”

During Atlas’s Freedom Dinner, Jo Kwongpresented the Freda Utley Prize to PaataSheshelidze, president of the NewEconomic School- Georgia. Freda Utley’sson, Jon Utley (right), was also there to cele-brate this occasion. (Courtesy of Kulik Photogr.)

Atlas’s Brad Lips announced NESG’s receiptof the Utley prize at a dinner organized byNESG and Cato in Tbilisi, Georgia lastOctober.

[ New Economic School – Georgia ]

39

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation’sTeach Freedom Initiative (TFI) continues to expandits efforts to promote scholars and institutions thatdesire to create academic centers to serve as alterna-tive channels to spread the principles of liberty anda free society. The biased teaching in the majority ofhigher education institutions makes the programsand activities offered by these university-based thinktanks crucial in reaching students.

For two years Atlas has supported such centers.Through Atlas’s TFI program, the Center forVision & Values (Grove City College), theMatthew Ryan Project (Villanova University), andthe Center for Political Economy and AmericanConstitutionalism (at inception stage, RhodesCollege) have organized conferences and other stu-dent-oriented activities geared towards exploringthe ideas of liberty and the philosophical founda-tions of a free society. Atlas has also begun working

with the Center for Political and EconomicThought (St. Vincent College).

TFI’s international programs included a conferencewhich Atlas organized in Montreal with the Centrefor Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (McGillUniversity) in November 2006, “Finding CommonGround: The Challenge of Freedom in the Westand in the Muslim World.” In Latin America, Atlascontinues to work with Francisco MarroquínUniversity (UFM, Guatemala), which was foundedmore than 30 years ago by a group of Guatemalanbusinessmen with a deep interest both in econom-ics and in the philosophy of freedom. Recently,Atlas co-sponsored a conference with UFM and theMilton Friedman Foundation to honor the legacyof Dr. Milton Friedman. In Asia, the University ofthe Philippines School of Economics, through aTFI grant, held a series of bimonthly seminars thathave served as forums for scholarly research on thePhilippine and world economies.

Think Tanks for a Secure, Free Society

Through its Think Tanks for a Secure, Free Society (SFS) pro-gram, Atlas is developing a global network of independentthink tanks that focus onissues where economicsintersects with security, intel-ligence and defense. Atlaslaunched SFS three yearsago to address the lack offree-market scholarship inthis area around the world.The SFS program works tocreate bridges between secu-rity experts already workingin the field and institutesthat are beginning to addressthese issues. Atlas’s SFS pro-gram promotes research,workshops and conferencesaround the world, striving tokeep these topics at the forefront.

This year, one of Atlas’s SFS partners, The Prague SecurityStudies Institute (PSSI), along with the Atlantic Council ofthe United States, conducted its first event in the U.S., on the

topic of missile defense in Europe. Atlas also co-sponsored aconference with the Lithuanian Free Market Institute(LFMI), “Economic Threats and Economic Security. WhoPays the Bill?” This conference analyzed security concernsrelating to the worldwide trend toward liberalization of foreign

investment in the energy andtransportation sectors. DuringAtlas’s Liberty Forum in April2007, Atlas, along with BorisBegovic of the Center forLiberal-Democratic Studies(Serbia), launched theFreedom TransparencyNetwork, a new initiativedesigned to contribute to theongoing fight against corrup-tion by connecting think tankswhich focus on the issue bysharing articles, informationand other assistance.

Atlas is uniquely situated tohelp in this fight because of its reputation and its network ofinternational think tanks. By continuing to expand the effortsof our SFS program, and engaging the some of the best minds,Atlas and its benefactors are helping to pave the way for a moresecure and freer society.

James Piereson, president ofthe William E. SimonFoundation and senior fel-low and director ofManhattan Institute's Centerfor the American University,moderated the panel,“Advancing Freedom in theAcademy” at Atlas’s annualLiberty Forum in April.

Atlas’s president, Alex Chafuen (standing) and Boris Begoviclaunched the Freedom Transparency Network (FTN) at this year’sLiberty Forum.

Teach Freedom Initiative

Atlas c Year-in-Review 2007


Atlas Events Ar Atlas Events Ar Governing by Network Book Launch in Latin America

In March, Stephen Goldsmith, former mayor of Indianapolis and current Daniel Paul Professor ofGovernment at Harvard University, joined Atlas president, Alex Chafuen in Chile and Argentina

to promote the Spanish translation the book he co-authored with William Eggers, Governing byNetwork: The New Shape of the Public Sector.

During this trip, Goldsmith and Chafuen met with think tank leaders, and prominent governmentand business leaders. Goldsmith was a keynote speakers at the Libertad y Desarrollo’s (LyD, Chile)day-long conference, “Public Policies for a Free Society.” LyD chairman, Carlos Cáceres honoredAlex with a silver plaque for his “untiring work to spread freedom across the globe.”

In Argentina, Goldsmith and Chafuen held a bookpresentation at Universida Austral and met with representatives of thethink tanks Recrear and Fundación Pensar Argentina, along with sev-eral government legislators and representatives. A presentation, “ElBuen Gobierno, los Think Tanks, y la Academia” (“Good Government,Think Tanks, and Academia”), held at Instituto Cultural ArgentinoNorteamericano (ICANA), was sponsored by the Atlas EconomicResearch Foundation, Atlas1853 (Argentina), and ICANA.

Stephen Goldsmith, co-author of Governing by Network: The New Shapeof the Public Sector, spoke during the Atlas-LyD event, “Public Policiesfor the Free Society.”

Network of Latin American Journalists

Last July, journalists from Argentina, Chile, England,Mexico, Peru and Venezuela gathered in Madrid,

Spain, to discuss the formation of a new network of jour-nalists. The Network de Periodistas Latinos Americanos(NEPLA) will connect and support journalists committedto promoting free press, free markets and free elections.Atlas and the Fundación Internacional para la Libertad(FIL) co-sponsored the meeting—which included formerSpanish Prime Minister José María Aznar and renownedPeruvian novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa—to discussNEPLA’s goals, challenges and activities. The journalistsexpressed enthusiasm for the initiative, declaring that nosimilar organization exists in Latin America today.Through exchange programs, training sessions and semi-nars, this new network will help Latin Americanjournalists conduct their work with greater skill and with a

more strategicand interna-tional vision.

Participants and organizersof the Atlas-FILjournalismevent.

Bahamas Symposium

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation and the Nassau Institute co-sponsored a symposium, “Changing the Direction of a Country to

Re-energize its Talents,” on June 21, 2007, at Atlantis, Paradise Island, inthe Bahamas. The Nassau Institute is a think tank dedicated to formulat-ing and promoting public policies for the Bahamas based on theprinciples of limited government, individual freedom and the rule of law.

During the event, James Shikwati of the Inter Regional EconomicNetwork (IREN, Kenya) spoke on commercializing African entrepre-neurship for wealth creation. Michael Fairbanks, of the consultingorganization OTF Group, spoke on the Bahamas’ participation in globalcompetition. Michael Walker, president of the Fraser InstituteFoundation (Canada), presented his research on market-orientedhealth care reform. This workshop was preceded by the JohnTempleton Foundation board meeting, which also included an addressby Shikwati.

James Shikwati spoke at the Atlas-Nassau Institute event,“Changing the Direction of a Country to Re-energize its Talents.”


r ound the Worldr ound the WorldEvents in Poland

In October, the Polish-American Foundation for

Economic Research andEducation(PAFERE) sponsoreda visit to Poland byAtlas president, AlexChafuen. Duringhis trip, Alex gave a90-minute prime-time TV interviewfor a viewing audi-ence of 700,000 onthe topic of theChristian foundations of free-market economics. He alsomet with representatives of Gosc Niedzielny, the thirdlargest Polish weekly publication and was interviewed bya Polish newspaper and other groups.

Alex spoke at the Higher Clerical Seminary, OpoleUniversity (Theology department) and discussed hispaper, “Quo Vadis Latin America (not yet published,but was delivered at Hillsdale College’s DurellColloquium),” at the Warsaw School of Economics.While Alex was the first economist to speak at theseseminaries, he found the questions asked by audiencemembers to reflect a positive perspective of the freesociety.

During this trip, Atlas sponsored two dinners. The firstincluded a mixture of bright students with back-grounds in history, political science and economics;the second included individuals from PAFERE, MisesInstitute in Poland, and other leaders in Poland’s free-dom movement.

Alex Chafuen spoke atvarious educational

institutions during histrip to Poland

International Thursdays

On the third Thursday of every month, the Atlas EconomicResearch Foundation hosts a forum for individuals and groups

in the Washington, D.C. area—as well as overseas visitors—toexchange ideas and give updates on their latest international projects.Atlas’s International Thursdays bring together allies with interna-tional interests in an informal setting, to share perspectives ondevelopments overseas and to provide opportunities for networkingand discovering synergies. This program was launched in April 2005as a part of Atlas’s ongoing efforts to connect freedom fighters aroundthe world and to strengthen and grow the international network offree market think tanks. International Thursdays are open to every-one interested in learning about promoting freedom. Please visit theAtlas Web site at www.AtlasUSA.org to find out when the nextInternationalThursday will beheld. We hope tosee you then!

Hamid Dalglijliof the Free MindsAssociationshared about thework his instituteis doing inAzerbaijan.

Immigration Dialogue

During 2007, Atlas partnered with the FriedrichNaumann Foundation (FNF, Germany), for

several Latin America-focused conferences. The first,“Perspectives and Proposals for Immigration,” washeld in San Diego, California, and focused on theissue of U.S.-Latin American immigration policy. InMay, Atlas also co-sponsored a conference with theregion-wide pro-freedom network Red Liberal deAmérica Latina (RELIAL) and FNF, where thinktank leaders and policy makers exchanged ideas andcultivated relationships.

SAVE THE DATE

Please join us April 25-26, 2008 for Atlas’s 8th annual LibertyForum in Atlanta, Georgia. The event will be held after theHeritage Resource Bank at Atlanta’s Sheraton Hotel. Be sureto check the Atlas website www.AtlasUSA.org for more infor-mation in the upcoming months. We hope to see you then!

2008 Liberty ForumApril 25-26

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation places the highest priority on earning the trust and loyaltyof the donors who support its mission. We are steadfast about honoring donor intent, keeping our

organization lean, and operating in a transparent and open manner. We are proud to report that thisyear we have earned Charity Navigator’s highest (four star) rating.

Each year, Atlas posts its tax returns and audited financial statements on itsWeb site (www.AtlasUSA.org) as soon as they are available. Below is asummary of Atlas’s most recent audited financial statements.

Statement of Financial Position

December 31, 2006 December 31, 2005 December 31, 2004Current Assets 2,384,736 2,458,132 2,087,007

Pledges Receivable (non-current) 212,563 436,737 436,737

Other Long-Term Assets 494,466 414,527 450,075

Total Assets 3,091,765 3,383,238 2,973,819

Current Liabilities 86,715 79,012 37,425

Long-Term Liabilities 37,169 50,705 4,876

Total Liabilities 123,884 129,717 42,301

Unrestricted Net Assets 738,825 563,608 579,256

Restricted Net Assets 2,229,056 2,405,465 2,185,749

Total Net Assets 2,967,881 3,253,521 2,931,518

Statement of Activities

2006 2005 2004

Contributions 4,526,875 4,108,746 2,834,681

Other Income 106,409 77,568 61,443

Total Revenue 4,633,284 4,186,314 2,896,124

Program Services 4,337,126 3,417,190 2,882,764

Management 263,565 226,642 222,440

Fundraising 318,233 220,479 128,293

Total Expenses 4,918,924 3,864,311 3,233,497

Financial Overview



The steady growth in Atlas’s budget over recent years is reflected in the chart below, whichpresents three-year, trailing averages in our total revenues and expenses. Because multi-year donations are booked entirely in the year in which they are pledged, these trend linestend to more accurately reflect Atlas’s financial condition than the year-by-year results.

In 2007, Atlas is on its way to achieving its highest-ever revenue total, for the third yearin a row.

We find it very encouraging to know that, as Atlas’s programs are touching the lives of evermore beneficiaries around the world, more and more donors are joining to support our work.

Your continued support of Atlas is crucial to our efforts of spreading the ideas of freedomaround the world. You can be confident that we remain dedicated to our mission and to thestandards of professionalism that you have come to expect.

Expense Revenue

2.0

2.4

2.8

3.2

3.6

4.0

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Atlas Revenue and Expense TrendsTrailing 3-Year Averages

$ Millions

Atlas c Year-in-Review 2007

Thank You

Atlas would like to recognize and thank all the judges who have helped with the judging process forthe Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Awards, established by Atlas in 1990 to honor its late founder.This annual program recognizes outstanding publications produced by independent public policy researchinstitutes. (Read more about this award on pages 34-35).

Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Awards

As we close out 2007, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation would like to thank all of the judges who make ourprize programs possible. These programs give credibility to those individuals and institutes that are most- effectivelyworking to spread the ideas of freedom around the world. The added credibility given to the winning institutes addsto their effectiveness by helping with fundraising and increasing their media exposure. The application process alsohelps Atlas to identify new individuals, organizations and projects to assist, mentor and publicize.

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation would like to thank the judges for the Freda Utley Awardfor Advancing Liberty, which is now in its second year. Atlas established the Freda Utley Prize forAdvancing Liberty to reward the efforts of think tanks working in difficult parts of the world that have beenmost effective in spreading the ideas of freedom: limited government, the rule of law, free enterprise andthe dignity of the individual. (Read more about this award on page 38).

Judges: Carlos Ball, Kris Mauren, Steve Pejovich, Andrea Rich, Alfred Regnery.

Freda Utley Award for Advancing Liberty

Current & Past Judges: Nigel Ashford (2003-present),John Blundell (founding judge, 1990-1993), DonaldBoudreaux (2002-present), James Buchanan (1990-2002), Alejandro Chafuen (1990-present), Israel Kirzner(1990-2001), Henri Lepage (1990-2001), NormanMacrae (1990-2001), Antonio Martino (1990-1997),Maurice McTigue (2001-present), Bridgett Wagner(2003-present), Christian Watrin (1998-present), Carl-

Johan Westholm (2002-present), and Edwin West,deceased (1990-2000).Adjunct Judges (help review certain foreign languagepublications): Brian Lee Crowley, Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, Jan Malek, José María Marco, ElenaLeontjeva, Steve Pejovich, Borut Prah, Ralph Raico,Randy Simmons, Jon Utley, Ian Vásquez, Richard Wong,and Kate Zhou

A tlas would like to offer its gratitude to the Advisory Council members of the Templeton FreedomAwards. Atlas’s Templeton Freedom Awards (TFA) program recognize new institutes with exceptional futurepromise, as well as outstanding work by leading think tanks in the areas of free-market solutions to poverty,ethics and values, social entrepreneurship and outreach to students. From 2004 to 2007, Atlas has distributedmore than US$1,250,000 in TFA Prizes and Awards. (Read more about these awards on pages 32-33)

Templeton Freedom Awards

Jay Ambrose Mariano Artigas Nigel Ashford Howard Baetjer Whitney Ball Robert Barro Mara Batlin Calvin Beisner Alberto G. Bochatey Peter Boettke Norman Bowie Vince Breglio

James Buchanan Cristina Burelli John W. Cooper Ramon P. Diaz Jean Bethke Elshtain Leonardo Facco Treviglio Steve Ferguson Todd Flanders Mary Glendon Stephen Goldsmith Grace Goodell Mario Gabriel Griffa

Kenneth Grubbs James Gwartney Carl Helstrom III Peter Hill Lawrence Kudlow Chandran Kukathas Deepak Lal Winston Ling David Lips Joseph McPherson Liu Kin Ming John Moore

Jennifer Roback Morse Mohit Satyanand Menlo Smith Michael Novak Herman Obermayer Ricardo Peirano Sam Peltzman Daniel S. Peters Philip Pettit Richard Pipes Alfred Regnery Jay Richards

Claudia Rosales y Rosales Nathan Rosenberg Jonathan Sacks Vinay Samuel Charles Townes Nancy Truitt Bernardo Villegas Damian von Stauffenberg Shalini Wadhwa Muhammad Yunus Dhaka Fareed Zakaria

Documents

Atlas Year in Review 2007