Home » News » Liberty + Leadership News: August 16, 2019

Liberty + Leadership News: August 16, 2019

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We hope you enjoy these top news stories about TFAS activities, alumni and events this week. Please visit us on social media for additional up-to-the-moment TFAS news and information and sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly updates.

Students Reflect on a Transformative TFAS Summer in Nation’s Capital

Kennedy Parkins ’19 gives remarks about her TFAS summer during the 2019 closing ceremony in Washington, D.C.

“Transformative. Life-Changing. Unparalleled. The Fullest Eight Weeks of Your Life.” What is it truly like to spend eight weeks as a TFAS student in the nation’s capital?

Five young leaders representing our D.C. Summer Program tracks tried to put the experience into words during our Closing Ceremony on Aug. 1 at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium. Each student focused on one element of the TFAS summer motto “LIVE, LEARN, INTERN” to provide firsthand testimony of how eight weeks with TFAS made a lasting impact.

You learn by listening. The fruit borne by conversations with others is not always sweet, as disagreements can be hard to digest. But, we should listen to others not because we want to disagree, but because we want to see what lies behind the words themselves.” – Jesse Anderson ’19

Read more testimonials and watch a video of the students’ remarks at TFAS.org/DCSummerStudents19. The D.C. Summer Programs students join a global network of more than 42,000 TFAS alumni. The Closing Ceremony was not an end, but a point on the TFAS Journey with a lifetime of opportunities for continued learning and professional development. We look forward to continuing to cultivate and work with these young leaders as they graduate from students to young professionals and make a positive impact on the world.


Chris Ullman Encourages TFAS Graduates to Lead with Love

Ullman encourages TFAS students to use love and their “simple gifts” to make a positive impact on the world.

Love. It’s not the typical message of a commencement speech, but TFAS Regent Chris Ullman demonstrated how love can serve as the foundation for all of life’s successes and solutions during the TFAS D.C. Summer Programs Closing Ceremony on Aug. 1, 2019.

Ullman, a four-time national and international whistling champion and founder of Ullman Communications LLC, defined love as caring about another person simply because of our shared humanity.

The point of thoughtful discourse is to share, to learn and to solve problems, not to score points. As a society, we need to get away from the poking and embrace the loving.”– Chris Ullman

Through personal stories, he told the students how he uses love to approach tense situations and encouraged them to do the same to help cut through today’s divisive and politically-charged society. Read more and watch a video of the full closing ceremony – including some award-winning whistling – at TFAS.org/DCSummerClosing19.


Young Leaders Engage in Civil Dialogue to Navigate Global Conflict at TFAS Prague

2019 TFAS Prague students in Wenceslas Square (Václavské náměstí), Prague’s center of many social and historical events including democratic demonstrations and celebrations.

How do we create a brighter and more prosperous future around the globe? One hundred and fourteen young leaders from 36 countries assembled at the TFAS Prague program this summer to develop the intellectual and philosophical foundations, as well as personal connections, necessary to make a difference in the world. 

Through a comprehensive curriculum on conflict management, political economy, diplomacy and liberty, students gained the knowledge and leadership experience necessary to become key players in solving the world’s future problems.

Theories, ideas, concepts of politics and economics are what we have studied, but implicitly we learned to be a better version of ourselves who will shape the future.” – Aruna Jantemirova ’19

On Aug. 2, the program officially concluded with a closing ceremony at the Charles University Karolinum. During the ceremony, TFAS was pleased to present Dr. Leszek Balcerowicz, Warsaw School of Economics professor, former deputy prime minister of Poland and former minister of finance, with the 2019 TFAS Prague Freedom Award. Balcerowicz served as the keynote speaker for the ceremony and shared his experiences on reforming the communist Polish economy to a free-market system. To read more about the 2019 TFAS Prague program, visit TFAS.org/Prague19.


Andy Puzder: Why Millennials Should Embrace Capitalism, Not Socialism

Puzder meets with students and conference attendees following his remarks.

What’s the core difference between capitalism and socialism? Capitalism takes our desire to improve our lives and funnels it outward so that we are meeting the needs of other people. Socialism focuses us back in on ourselves by making us compete with everybody else for a limited supply of government-provided goods and services.

Former CKE Restaurants CEO and best-selling author Andy Puzder made the case for why young people should embrace the opportunities of capitalism and reject socialist myths during the TFAS Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.

Capitalism is the only system that has ever meaningfully lifted people out of poverty and it’s lifted billions of people out of poverty. That it is a compassionate system. It is a benevolent system. It is a moral system and it’s right.”– Andy Puzder

You can read more and watch Puzder’s full conference remarks at TFAS.org/Puzder19.


Post of the Week


Quick Links

TFAS professor Dr. Nikolai Wenzel writes in Law & Liberty about his firsthand experience observing the protests in Hong Kong, where he says “the light of freedom risks being snuffed out.”


Jillian Kay Melchior, Novak ’11, reports from the ground in Hong Kong this week as demonstrators turned to new tactics in the wake of police violence. You can read her account on The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion page.

Kiley Crossland ’06, an assistant editor of WORLD Digital, is profiled as a 2010 alumna of the John Jay Fellowship program. You can read a Q&A with Crossland on the John Jay Institute’s website.


TFAS professor Dr. Don Boudreaux explains how ordinary Americans are indeed much richer today than they were during any imagined past golden age in an article for the American Institute for Economic Research.


Jasper Kerr, a rising senior at Washington-Liberty High School, is highlighted in InsideNova for being accepted into the TFAS Foundation for Teaching Economics “Economics for Leaders” program.


John Lettieri ’03, PPF ’08, CEO and president of the Economic Innovation Group, joins CNBC’s “The Exchange” to discuss why he sees “heartland visas” as a possible solution to the dwindling U.S. workforce hitting the heartland.


TFAS Board of Visitors member Ilya Shapiro, director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, writes for Cato about a federal lawsuit filed to fight against occupational licensing laws for eyebrow threaders in Mississippi.


Peter Suderman, Novak ’10, analyzes the federal budget deficit in Reason, finding that the “$866 billion budget gap so far this fiscal year represents a 27 percent increase over the same period last year.”


Carrie Sheffield ’06, Novak ’06, and the multimedia company she founded Bold TV are featured in an American Conservative article about respectful dialogues that are happening every day.

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