Adam Bartha
United Kingdom
SFL SUCCESS STORY:
Adam Bartha
SFL Europe
Former student activist leading a libertarian network
Adam Bartha, a former student leader, is now advancing liberty as the Director of the European Policy Information Center (EPICENTER), which is an initiative of eight leading think tanks from across the European Union. EPICENTER seeks to coordinate its members when it comes to pan-European issues.
Adam first encountered Students For Liberty while working as a Charles Koch Fellow at the Independent Institute. He recalls that the main reason he got involved as a student leader was due to a professional relationship which developed between him and one of the founders of European Students For Liberty who was tutoring at his university, the University of Sheffield.
Within Students For Liberty, Adam co-founded the first libertarian student society on the campus of the University of Sheffield. “Sheffield was a challenging environment for libertarian students; we had 9 Marxist/Leninist/left-wing student societies, but registering the first libertarian one was not a smooth sail.”
Adam started as an Event & Outreach Officer at EPICENTER directly after completing his Masters at the London School of Economics. He became responsible for their European outreach last year, which allowed him to regularly visit the European Parliament and Commission to talk with their representatives and ensure that free-market arguments are at least considered in the decision-making process.
Adam believes, “it is definitely an uphill battle, as classical liberalism is usually not at the core of centralized bureaucracies, but I find that many people are receptive to our arguments.”
In March, he was appointed as the Director of EPICENTER and is now working to spread the idea that Europe functions best when “both personal and economic liberties are at the core of our actions.”
Adam reflects warmly on his time with Students For Liberty:
“SFL is all about friendships and connections you make. Even today, I tremendously enjoy the political debates that I have with old SFL friends — whether they work in the German parliament, returned to the academic world, or became entrepreneurs building an exciting new world; these connections will remain life-long, which is of incredible value to me.”