By Angbeen Abbas
The Adam Smith Institute (ASI), a think tank and lobbying group that advocates for free market and classical liberal policies, is fundraising to put up a memorial for the economist and Nobel Prize winner Friedrich Hayek near the LSE campus. ASI is working with LSE and Camden Council to place the memorial on the corner of Lincoln’s Inn Field.
The ASI will be funding the memorial through private donations. Architect Tony Dyson of Donal Insall Associates will be working on the memorial with ASI. Donal Insall Associates has worked on other monuments, including statues of Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.
F. A. Hayek was a leading figure of the Austrian School of Economics and received the Nobel Prize in Economics with Gunnar Myrdal in 1974. He was known for his defense of free-market capitalism and free trade policies, as well as his criticism of socialism. He joined the faculty at LSE in 1931 and taught on campus until 1950, going on to teach at the University of Chicago and the University of Freiburg.
The Beaver reached out to Dr. Eamonn Butler, co-founder and Director of the ASI, who commented, “It is past time that London had a memorial to this extraordinary man. Fleeing Nazi Germany, Hayek made London and the LSE his home. Hayek was a champion of freedom, an anti-fascist, and globalist. His work on free markets and a free society have helped transform the world for the better.”
Dr Butler added, “Hayek traced the idea of spontaneous order from Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ to the present day. He also made groundbreaking contributions on trade cycle theory and policy, competition in currency, and even human psychology. A physical memorial would not only honour him directly but encourage more people to learn about his legacy.”
LSE student societies are also beginning fundraising for the memorial. Max Marlow, President of the Hayek Society at LSE stated, “the Hayek Society will be helping to fundraise and campaign to have this statue put up. We also hope to work with the Austrian Society to honour his legacy and keep his memory alive on campus, just as it is in every economy and textbook all over the world.”
