January 5, 2006

RALEIGH – The state’s largest think tank has launched a major new program, a network of North Carolina faculty and scholars interested in the classical liberal tradition and its rich scholarly history.

The John Locke Foundation created the Faculty Affiliate Network to serve as an informal resource for classical liberal scholars for networking, research review and feedback, development, and dialogue among faculty and students.

On Friday the John Locke Foundation unveiled the network’s web site, www.LockeFAN.org. The site offers original research, discussions of scholarly books, listing of upcoming seminars, colloquia and other events, news of interest, and contact names and information of the faculty affiliates.

“Professors at North Carolina’s many colleges and universities form a key audience for our programs and events,” said John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation. “With the birth of the Faculty Affiliate Network, we can tap these important campus resources and help to build a vibrant, collaborative community of scholars dedicated to fundamental principles and the search for truth.”

The web site also includes pages of interest to students seeking to learn more about classical liberal ideas and discourse with faculty on those issues.

“The Faculty Affiliate Network will reach out to North Carolina’s students to foster student clubs, reading groups, and seminars at local campuses,” said Dr. Karen Palasek, JLF’s director of Academic and Educational Programs. “We expect it to cultivate outside development opportunities and promote communications and interaction between students, faculty, scholars and scholarly groups.”

The site offers scholars an outlet on the Web for their research and interests. Affiliated faculty will be able to use it as a way to drive interest in courses and also to find organizations that support research in the classical liberal tradition.

Central tenets of the classical liberal philosophy are individual rights and responsibilities, private property, and a government whose role is limited to defending those institutions. Enlightenment philosophers such as Adam Smith and John Locke forged many of the ideas that permeate the language of classical liberal thought, then and now.

For more information about the John Locke Foundation’s new Faculty Affiliate Network and web site, please contact Dr. Karen Palasek at 919-828-3876 or [email protected].