Keeping Libertarianism Alive in the Academy: Organizations,Scholars,and the Idea Pipeline

Career Pipelines

The “pipeline” metaphor has long been applied to careers inside and outside of academia. It was used prominently by government agencies and universities in the 1970s and 1980s to determine how to generate a science, technology, mathematics, and engineering workforce that would allow the United States to compete internationally in technological development (Blickenstaff 2005). In this early conception of the metaphor, pipelines are infrastructures that support new influxes of students into the ranks of existing disciplines, composed of two important elements: a flow of career aspirants and the “linear sequence of steps necessary” for novitiates to become full-fledged scientists or engineers (Metcalf 2010;2). The infrastructures consist of educational institutions from high school to graduate school to postdoctoral fellowships, workplaces where advanced degree holders can be employed, and the means for progressively advancing through a career (Cannady, Greenwald, and Harris 2014). The pipeline metaphor, in other words, rests on the assumption that what happens at each step is conditioned by what came before, and aspirants must be sufficiently prepared and given incentives to successfully make it to the next level (Witteveen and Attewell 2020).

In later decades, researchers concerned about gender and racial/ethnic underrepresentation in established fields adopted the pipeline metaphor to analyze inequalities in career outcomes. Sociologists argue that an aspirant’s ability to make it to the end stages of an academic career is structured by the availability of resources, supportive mentorship, and high-quality professional training from various organizations (Hurst et al. 2023). This preparation enables scholars to satisfy the preferences of gatekeepers that control access to jobs (Rivera 2020; Williams et al. 2019). When students from demographically diverse groups enter the pipeline but prematurely exit or do not achieve the same levels of professional success as members of other groups, the pipeline is said to be “leaky” (Cannady et al. 2014).

Repairing a leaky pipeline hinges on both enabling members of underrepresented groups to meet gatekeeper expectations and encouraging gatekeepers to reconsider assumptions about applicants. These interventions are taken by academic units within colleges and universities, which may create programs to help young scholars advance to the next stage of their careers (Adida et al. 2020). External organizations may take on this role as well. For example, foundations provide fellowships to graduate students from underrepresented groups, granting them additional time and resources to position themselves for success (Stewart, Williamson, and King 2008; Vélez-Ibáñez, Szecsy, and Peña 2013). Inside or outside of the academy, actors who repair leaky pipelines must have sociological imaginations that allow them to see the connections between their intervention efforts and the requirements of gatekeepers at various career stages (Anteby, Chan, and DiBenigno 2016; Rivera 2020).

Idea Pipelines, via the Sociology of Ideas

Unlike in settled fields, in which correcting leaky pipelines for underrepresented groups involves supporting students as they move through an already existing pipeline infrastructure, the aim of other pipeline builders is to support areas of thought where this infrastructure may exist only partially, or not at all. Proponents of this second set of pipelines must first work to ensure that clear pathways to building careers in the field exist before they can direct aspirants to it. We refer to this latter group of actors as needing to build idea pipelines: structures for keeping esoteric viewpoints alive by cultivating careers in the academy.

Organizations inside colleges and universities, such as campus-based institutes, help build idea pipelines by creating community around faculty’s shared intellectual interests (Frickel and Gross 2005). But outside organizations, such as philanthropies, are frequently key to bolstering idea pipelines, as well (Barnhardt 2017). Actors outside of academia have limited influence inside of it, but they may aim to influence scholar decision making by providing opportunities that encourage scholars to focus on perspectives they wish to support. Although scholarly decision making is complex, work in the sociology of ideas has shown that both intellectual and nonintellectual factors—such as the pursuit of academic status (Bourdieu 1988; Collins 1998), pressures to remain productive (Foster, Rzhetsky, and Evans 2015), and signals from colleagues about their interests (Crane 1972; Gross and Fleming 2012; Zuccala 2006)—can influence the direction of scholars’ research. Resources provided or withheld during graduate school can also shape which opportunities scholars move toward and which they avoid (Hurst et al. 2023; Stewart et al. 2008). Organizations that build idea pipelines strive to intervene in some (if not all) of these factors.

For instance, Aldrich (2012) attributed the success of the interdisciplinary subfield of entrepreneurship studies in part to the Kauffman Foundation, which early on provided support for graduate fellowships, research centers, and the creation of unique datasets. Aldrich credited professional associations and the conferences they sponsor with developing an “invisible college” allowing geographically dispersed scholars to communicate with each other (see also Zuccala 2006). Without interventions by “institutional entrepreneurs” making a career in these ideas more viable, the subfield would not have reached “maturity.” Additional examples of new philanthropy-led subspecialty areas include the Ford Foundation’s support for women’s studies in the 1970s (Proietto 1999), the Russell Sage Foundation’s seed funding for behavioral economics in the 1980s to 2000s (Mascarenhas 2011), and the Olin Foundation’s support for the previously fringe paradigm of law and economics programs at law schools in the 1980s (Teles 2008). However, the construction of idea pipelines does not have to be targeted toward novel perspectives. Pipelines may also be built for subfields where a vibrant community once thrived but has since diminished in prominence (Simon 1999; Tan 2021). Intellectual movements, after all, can be episodic in nature and, if they do not succeed in gathering adherents, the ideas can disappear (Frickel and Gross 2005). Organizations and scholars recognize that for any viewpoints to flourish, professors must be able to build their careers around them.

Creating idea pipelines, though, whether for new or fading perspectives, faces a practical challenge: overcoming indifference, or even resistance, from various stakeholders. This is especially true within the academy where intellectual legitimacy and financial support redound through the advocacy of high-status figures within established disciplines (Frickel and Gross 2005). For instance, it took time for entrepreneurship and behavioral economics to gain momentum because there was a dearth of aspirants in the beginning phase of the idea pipeline. The perspectives were innovative, and few professors had yet to teach the ideas to the next generation of scholars. In other cases, contentiousness can surround the ideas, which limits their growth by cutting off the flow of potential aspirants and critical resources. Mainstream scholars may challenge the development of a pipeline that cuts against the methodological, analytical, or theoretical assumptions that most scholars in the area have staked their careers on (Au 2021; Frickel and Gross 2005; Teplitskiy et al. 2018)

Members of the campus community may also consider an idea pipeline unwelcome for ideological reasons. In our case, although progressives are in the majority on most American campuses (Gross 2013; Gross and Fosse 2012; Ladd and Lipset 1975; Lazarsfeld and Thielens 1958), some libertarian scholars take active roles in the conservative movement (Doherty 2007). Among our interviewees are those drafting texts for right-leaning state and national think tanks within the Charles Koch political network and serving as facilitators in the “constituency mobilization” that takes place at Koch-organized seminars for wealthy donors and conservative political organizations (Skocpol and Hertel-Fernandez 2016, 685). Moreover, libertarian beliefs about the beneficence of capitalism are frequently conflated with support for the “neoliberal order” (Gerstle 2022), which puts libertarian scholars’ ideas in conflict with most of their colleagues’ ideological priorities.

Libertarianism, therefore, is often treated as tainted and illegitimate in the academy (Shields and Dunn 2016). This is true even in economics, in which libertarian scholars tend to be far more sanguine than their mainstream counterparts about the ability of markets to self-regulate and doubtful about the efficacy of any type of government regulation. ² Under such circumstances, proponents have to build an idea pipeline in a context not just of friction, but of active resistance (Cigarroa 2022; Gluckman 2021; McCabe 2018). Libertarian scholars have written about their role in the academy (Doherty 2007; Zwolinski and Tomasi 2023), and this research offers insightful accounts, especially when read as a history of ideas. However, there is not yet a sociology of libertarian academics that looks at how contemporary faculty develop programs related to their ideas, distinguish themselves from conservatives and progressives, coordinate action within and outside their campuses, or find support to become professional scholars.

Taken together, the challenges faced by libertarian-friendly subspecialities such as public choice and Austrian economics can be existential. The ideas could die without active support. Although school administrations or state legislatures may put pressure on some colleges and universities to introduce more ideological heterogeneity into the curriculum, these efforts are unlikely to scale nationally or expand the ideas beyond a few scattered departments already recognized as libertarian leaning (e.g., Larimer 2021; Saul 2018; Vanderpool 2011). It is only when nontraditional actors take an interest in an academic niche that intellectual movements may enjoy a resuscitation. “Undead” forms of knowledge find resources in “unconventional” places, for example, among wealthy businessmen and philanthropists who begin engaging in academic work to support these marginalized ideas (Simon 1999; see Beets 2015, 2019, respectively, for a description of wealthy philanthropists John Allison’s and Charles Koch’s support of libertarian ideas). Given unpopular academic subspecialties’ challenges and constraints, we turn our attention to libertarianism to illuminate the conceptual value of idea pipelines in studies of higher education.

Getting Connected through Professors

As any organization’s leader is aware, it is unwise to expect that “if you build it, they will come,” to borrow a line from the movie Field of Dreams. Rather, IHS relies on people in their network to send students to them. Matt Zwolinski, a philosopher at the University of San Diego, said his “first encounter with IHS” occurred during the summer after his sophomore year. A visiting libertarian professor at his college, who “was affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford,” recognized that Zwolinski “was interested in this stuff and mentioned IHS to me.” Getting exposure to “a bunch of different lecturers” and hanging out “with other students who were interested in the same kinds of things,” Zwolinski said, was “really exciting.”

Like Zwolinski’s professor, the faculty members we interviewed understood that little attention is paid to libertarian ideas in college courses and they, too, were keen to connect curious students to IHS. Joe Calhoun, an economist at Florida State University, said he is a “big supporter of IHS. . . . Whenever they have a program, a contest, or anything available,” he would “post it on my Canvas page and encourage students to apply.” Loren Lomasky, a philosopher at the University of Virginia, said, “As you can imagine,” there are “a lot of students who show up to my classes” and office hours “because they’re kind of libertarian, and . . . think I’m like minded.” It is these students he encourages to apply for summer seminars because “I have great respect for [IHS] . . . and I have a lot of respect for the students I try to help” as they are “moving in that direction.” Bruce Benson, a retired professor of economics at Florida State University, said that “if a student came to me and asked, ‘How can I learn more about these ideas?’ I would often guide them towards IHS.”

In sum, IHS has kept the libertarian idea pipeline alive by pulling undergraduates into its orbit and referring them on to future opportunities. This work is necessary but difficult, because, as Fletcher told us, it is common belief within the libertarian pipeline that the academy is “dominantly unfriendly to these ideas.”

Seminars and Workshops at IHS and Mercatus

Not unlike the weeklong seminars it once coordinated for undergraduates, IHS hosts seminars for graduate students. Knox, studying at a public flagship university to become a philosopher, said he had recently attended a weeklong colloquium on “different classical liberal ideas.” A highlight of the conference for Knox was when “one of the big-name IHS dudes” took the time to critique his dissertation. “[He] totally disagrees with my viewpoints.” However, Knox framed this as a positive interaction: a chance to hear constructive feedback to improve his argument that he could not have received elsewhere. Along these same lines, IHS organizes manuscript workshops for graduate students at which they can connect with audiences capable of providing insights they might not get from their thesis and dissertation committee members.

Interviewees suggested that IHS and Mercatus events run the ideological gamut, but they are especially important for strengthening participants’ knowledge of libertarian theory. Adam Martin, an economist from Texas Tech University, said that the Mercatus Center’s Adam Smith Fellowship brings graduate students from many disciplines together “to read books in Austrian economics, Bloomington political economy, and Virginia political economy. ³ They’re introducing students to institutional analysis,” which is “the sort of stuff they wouldn’t get in a regular econ or philosophy program.”

In addition to focusing on foundational libertarian ideas and students’ research projects, IHS and Mercatus offer guidance on other parts of the academic career. Harry, an assistant professor at a regional public university, attended an IHS workshop on “how to be a better teacher.” Pointing to the assumed political landmines associated with being a professor with heterodox perspectives, Harry said “talking to other libertarian academics helps, because I think we do struggle with this; I do not want to be indoctrinating my students.” Meanwhile through Mercatus, Harry attended a training on “Here’s how to write a better op-ed. Here’s how to turn your academic research into a policy paper.’” As a more out-of-the-box example, Rojas told us that IHS “had one of Margaret Thatcher’s speechwriters come in and give a public speaking workshop. And I wrote down every word that dude said. . . . IHS understand[s] that sometimes you need a professional polish that graduate programs aren’t producing.”

IHS, in particular, invests in helping put a “polish” on candidates’ job search efforts. Bailey spoke of sending “my job market materials to them. They revise them, or they connect you to another faculty to help you with it.” Asked if he thought IHS gave him a leg up in getting a job placement, he said, “They were definitely a huge part of it.” According to Rojas, IHS has “learned that a lot of graduate programs are not good at giving support to their own students, much less ones who are interested in libertarian or classical liberal ideas.” Or, as Maddox put it, “IHS provided—what do you call it?—the hidden curriculum.”

Fellowships

Among the most important resources given to graduate students is fellowships, which help young scholars focus on improving their research while also meeting their material needs. A number of our interviewees had enjoyed this type of funding through IHS. This included Sebastian, who worked out an arrangement between his university and the organization, which minimized the number of semesters he needed to work as a teaching assistant while still providing a comparable salary and the same health coverage as other graduate students in his cohort. Carl reported that his funding requests to IHS were “modest,” but the money he received “helped me to not just eat ramen noodles when I was in graduate school.” Such resources are provided, IHS’s Chamlee-Wright said, not only to make sure there is food in the pantry but “to set them up for success in the academic job market.”

Over the past two decades, the Mercatus Center has increased its funding for graduate students within the idea pipeline. A senior staff member at the think tank told us that graduate fellowships are “part of scaling some of our existing programs.” When this staff member arrived at the organization in the 2000s, “We had 12 graduate students,” all at George Mason University, and “the question we asked ourselves was: How do we increase that number?” Mercatus “started a series of extramural fellowship programs,” in which PhDs from a range of universities now gather to “read Adam Smith, [Friedrich] Hayek, and talk about ideas.” According to this staff member, the fellowship programs have been very successful in attracting a greater number of graduate students to work with Mercatus. The organization is pleased that its growing graduate portfolio is among the “things that actually cash out,” in the pursuit of “develop[ing] talent.”

Networking

There is a joke that trying to get libertarians moving in any one direction is like herding cats. This is because an ideology premised on individualism does not necessarily encourage people to work together. Yet despite this reputation, libertarian-leaning organizations provide ample opportunities for networking across disciplines, which benefits graduate students intellectually, professionally, and while on the job market.

IHS’s Chamlee-Wright said that her organization provides many resources to graduate students, but “the biggest thing, once they’re connected to us, [is that] we can connect them to other scholars in our community.” Building such a network around libertarian ideas is appreciated by young academics, who worry about being misfits (or worse, pariahs) in their disciplines. Seth, now a full professor, mentioned the organization’s “moral support” when he was a graduate student. He recalled that after seminars, “the program officers would call me up to see how I was doing.” Such a call might be to recommend a book he should read or to connect him with the people best able to help his career. “‘I see you’ve got a one-year position at such-and-such place,’ they’d say. ‘You should go introduce yourself to so-and-so’” on that campus. Clarifying that although IHS staff members “were not in a position to set up job interviews,” they were able to forge professional ties within higher education for the good of graduate students’ future careers.

In general, IHS staff members are active in connecting young scholars with help tailored to their specific needs. For example, after Mateo attended an online seminar “about how to apply for the job market,” IHS e-mailed him, asking if the organization could assist in other ways. Pursuing a social science PhD in a discipline with a tiny number of publicly known libertarians, he asked for help being introduced to like-minded senior scholars. IHS set him up with a mentor in his area of study. Mateo has since had “multiple Zoom meetings” with this professor, and he feels these conversations are more relevant than those with his mainstream dissertation adviser.

For some, IHS’s support in expanding their networks is decisive to their careers. For example, Flynn spoke of IHS staff members “who are very good at knowing what [job positions] are open,” particularly those not in conventional career paths for PhDs. “A lot of the opportunities seem to be in these more interdisciplinary areas” that “you just would never hear about” when talking to typical directors of graduate studies. Maddox offers another success story. He told us that an IHS staff member introduced him to a senior scholar who ran a CKF-funded research center at a selective liberal arts college. In their initial meeting the two “hit it off.” As Maddox explained, the senior scholar “found out I wasn’t a weirdo and just said, ‘I’m setting up a postdoc. Can you do X, Y and Z?’” With a simple “yes,” Maddox secured his first job out of graduate school.

Summarizing the graduate segment within the network, IHS and Mercatus have been crucial benefactors in the careers of many libertarian academics. Ryan Stowers, the CEO of CKF, which is a major funder of both Mercatus and IHS, said,

The graduate student value prop[osition] has always been a very important driver to our philanthropy. Ideas matter; you need people to generate and synthesize and pound the heck out of these ideas. Where are they going to come from? They’re going to come from Ph.D. programs—really important!

There are other organizations that support (or have supported) the idea pipeline for libertarian academics, such as the Liberty Fund and the now defunct Earhart Foundation. But by a large margin, IHS and Mercatus do the most to ensure that promising graduate students learn about libertarian viewpoints, get networked to other scholars, and gather the skills and cultural resources of “the hidden curriculum” to succeed in the academic job market.

Conferences and Networking as Refuge

Spaces to connect are crucial for reinforcing the idea pipeline. APEE, of which several of our interviewees are members, “gives young scholars a place to present their papers, give it a trial run,” said Peter Boettke, an economist at George Mason University. Boettke pointed out that providing resources to junior faculty is a benefit in the other direction, too, because if organizations do not cultivate new participants and leadership, some organizations might “die on the vine” because of their older membership. He had seen this happen at the Mont Pelerin Society, at which, he said, “you have more obituaries at a meeting than you do new papers!” Keeping the pipeline filled with young blood, in the face of “an aging population” is, practically speaking, existential for generating libertarian ideas.

Among the most lauded of all such meeting places are those that allow scholars to immerse themselves in the full spectrum of libertarian thought, especially the colloquia hosted by the Liberty Fund, an organization with a $350 million endowment from its founder, industrialist Pierre Goodrich (Liberty Fund 2023). At Liberty Fund seminars, participants “get together for two or three days, and you have a set of readings,” said Michael Munger, a political scientist at Duke University. “There is a strong norm that no conclusions will be drawn, and that no deep truths will be identified. You’re just trying to learn more about this reading.” Dan D’Amico mock-indignantly said that Liberty Fund seminars are “very indulgent to participate in.” Likening the colloquia to a Catholic retreat where “you stop everything, and you hang out and think about God,” he said that in Liberty Fund’s case, participants “do that with Adam Smith, James Buchanan, and F.A. Hayek.”

Like others, Eric Mack, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Tulane, extolled the experience, not only for the sheer pleasure of it, but for its effects on participants’ networks. “It helps people’s careers.” Elaborating, he explained that “a junior faculty member” can “come back to campus” and tell their colleagues, as Mack himself has done, “Well yeah, I was talking to [famed economist] Gordon Tullock this week.” Such an unusual experience can lead to “forming relationships. And all of a sudden, they’re getting people to write recommendations for them.” Similarly, Chandran Kukathas, a political scientist at Singapore Management University, told us about being fortunate enough to have attended a “star-studded” debate between David Friedman and Robert Nozick, two titans in libertarian circles.

The weekend seminars sponsored by the Liberty Fund, as well as those coordinated by IHS, serve an additional function. As Fletcher, the former IHS staff member, pointed out, “one of the dominant values that IHS provides is, overwhelmingly, a community and a network.” Chamlee-Wright agreed with this view. “Intellectual community is really the lifeblood of a rewarding, rich, meaningful academic career,” she said.

That sense of camaraderie can be really valuable, especially if you feel like you’re someone who hasn’t found your place within your home institution. Feeling like you’re always doing battle—that can feel like a really lonely place. So that sense of intellectual community can be a real lifeline.

Publication Venues

Another way organizations keep libertarian ideas alive is by providing outlets for publishing. On the more radical side of the libertarian sphere, Florida State’s Bruce Benson and Loyola University of New Orleans economist Walter Block have turned to venues such as the Mises Institute’s Journal of Libertarian Studies. As a junior faculty member fresh out of his PhD program, Benson had a “pretty interesting” paper on property rights. However, he told us, “I didn’t think it would go into a mainstream economics journal.” So he turned to this specialized outlet, and after the paper was published there, he got quickly connected with other “anarcho-capitalist” scholars and their organizations, professional linkages that would go on to define his career.

Catering to those with a more classical liberal bent, several interviewees regularly seek publication in Social Philosophy and Policy. We were repeatedly told that this journal is crucial to maintaining the libertarian idea pipeline. Describing the content, Eric Mack noted, “almost all” the articles are based on “very good stuff which would deserve to be published in other [mainstream] journals.” But, he added, those papers “might very well not” see the light of day “because of the [anti-libertarian] bias of reviewers” and “the bias of editors.” So, were it not for the existence of this journal, “there are probably some people who would’ve basically been driven out of academia.” According to Chandran Kukathas, while the journal’s articles are as “rigorously refereed” as those in any top-tier outlet, the original impetus for starting the publication was “to make sure that libertarian views were getting into the mainstream.” To this point, the journal’s current associate editor, Bas van der Vossen, conceded that mainstream readers might occasionally dismiss some of the articles as “a little far out” for taking on perspectives nonlibertarian philosophers and political scientists “wouldn’t take seriously.” But, for scholars engaged with libertarian ideas, what others consider “far out” can still be a boon for their curricula vitae and an important intellectual contribution within their academic niches

Individual and Institutional Grants

Individual grants—often easily obtained in the libertarian idea pipeline because funders reach out to cultivate scholars—is another benefit in senior faculty careers. Dan D’Amico, who writes about incarceration, said that he’d been approached several times by CKF, whose money he was happy to take, especially as the program officers’ approach to funding was “You wrote this [article and] we find it interesting. Would you be willing to extrapolate on these other relevant things that you haven’t gotten the opportunity to talk about yet?” Adam Martin, of Texas Tech, had applied to CKF for a large grant, but staff’s response to his application was, “We didn’t particularly like your proposal, but take $50,000 and do whatever you want. . . . We trust you to do something interesting.” Senior CKF staff members have written that the foundation’s support of such scholars is a critical contribution to the “diversity of ideas” in the academy, criticizing progressives’ use of “strong-arm tactics” to prevent other viewpoints from being heard on campus (Hardin 2015).

According to a staff member we interviewed in 2018, who has worked in both the foundation and institute named for Charles Koch, the amount the foundation gives to faculty research has grown over the past 15 years. Whereas in 2008, “our total grant-making was about $8 million,” with “about two dozen faculty” grantees, by 2017, the foundation’s total grant-making had grown to $90 million, with a significant portion flowing to “nearly a thousand faculty members.” Although CKF is not alone in this space, it is the foundation most frequently mentioned by the academics we interviewed.

Beyond grants made directly to scholars, philanthropic donations for various campus initiatives also benefit the idea pipeline. Research centers and institutes afford faculty autonomy by increasing professors’ leverage with school administrators (Dolan et al. 2019). These features were recognized by CKF when it embarked on a strategy to establish centers for the promotion of individual liberty and free markets on campuses across the country. This strategy was based on “observations about how to have a disproportionate impact, given how outnumbered we all are,” as Charlie Ruger, then director of university investments at CKF, said at APEE’s 2016 annual conference. ⁴ In the same session, an economics professor at a liberal arts college said that the Koch grant his center received—the largest in his institution’s history—“helped us convince the university to do things it wasn’t comfortable with.” Referring to the negotiating power this gave him (and reflecting the size of his institutional grant), his favored retort to colleagues asking him to change something about his center was “I’ll give you two million reasons why I’m not gonna do that.” In that year, CKF supported 53 research centers at colleges and universities around the country (Latham 2018), and between 2005 and 2019, Koch gave out more than $450 million to more than 550 colleges and universities (UnKoch My Campus 2021).

The autonomy granted by outside funding means that centers and departments supported by CKF may be more libertarian leaning in their focus on free-market economics and capitalism as an ethical system than most departments nationwide (see, e.g., Beets 2015, 2019). An illustrative example is the Department of Economics at George Mason University, which has received funding from Charles Koch since the 1980s. One quarter of the funding CKF has disbursed over its decades of existence has been directed to George Mason (UnKoch My Campus 2021), in part for the support of its specialty in the libertarian-leaning subfield of Austrian economics (Doherty 2007). ⁵ George Mason is now the only remaining economics department in the country where graduate students can specialize in this subfield. But for most centers and institutes, CKF’s strategy supports the libertarian idea pipeline by being a source of funding for minor empire building by senior scholars across the country.

Philanthropic support also serves indirectly as a source of employment in a tight labor market for junior faculty, such as into undergraduate philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE) programs, some of which have long-standing support from CKF. As Michael Munger, who heads up a PPE program at Duke, told us, “Many philosophy departments don’t have jobs except in PPE.” The interdisciplinary foundations of these programs means that graduate students who have trained in PPE are most attractive to staff them. Simon, a philosophy professor who served as the PPE director at a regional university, said that when he was recruiting faculty,

I had to have people who had some background in economics. . . . And once you say, “social scientists or someone in humanities with actual knowledge of economics” . . . I think, almost by default, you’re going to have people who have certain libertarian sympathies.

In summary, from supporting meeting spaces, to providing publishing outlets, to funding departments and programs that hire young libertarian scholars, outside organizations play a major role in the lives of faculty who are part of this idea pipeline.