A Free-Market University; W. H. Peterson

-display much virtue, including the virtue of individual responsibility, free markets, and limited government. Indeed, many a university has become a wasteland, morally and otherwise. An exception to the rule lies about a thousand miles south of the Rio Grande. It's Universidad Francisco Marroquin, founded in 1972 in rented space in the capital city of Guatemala. Clues to its philosophy are seen in the name of one of its newest buildings, the Ludwig von Mises Library, so desig nated in foot-high polished brass lettering over its entrance, and in the fact that mem bers of the UFM faculty have been pub lished on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal as much as those of any American university. Another clue is seen in its honorary de gree awards to individuals of the persuasion of Leonard Read, Henry Hazlitt, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Benjamin Rogge, Peter Bauer, W. H. Hutt, Alberto Benegas Lynch, George Roche, Agustin Navarro, Edwin Feulner, Antony Fisher, John ChamDr. Peterson, adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foundation and former Lundy Professor at Campbell University, is this month's guest editor. He received an honorary degree from UFM in 1991.

berlain, Percy Greaves, .Bettina Bien Greaves, Viktor Frankl, M. Stanton Evans, Hans Sennholz, Israel Kirzner, Leonard Liggio, Henry Manne, Thomas Szasz, and J. William Middendorf. UFM enrollment has grown to 4,500 with schools in medicine, dentistry, law, theol ogy, architecture, education, economics, accounting, computer science, and business administration-the latter with a branch in El Salvador. Exchange programs are main tained with American universities such as Texas A and M. UFM tuition is maintained at around 20 percent higher than the two other private Guatemalan universities, with applications nonetheless exceeding admissions by a sig nificant factor. (Some local want ads for doctors, lawyers, CPAs, etc., stipulate that only UFM grads will be considered.) But no qualified UFM applicant is turned away if tuition payments cannot be met, as student loans are available. UFM's high tuition is all the more amaz ing in view of the fact that Guatemala's national university, whose main campus is just a few miles away, charges its students practically nothing. Understandably so since the national university is allotted four per cent of the central government's budget, in accordance with Guatemala's constitution.

UFM funding is assisted by Foundation Francisco Marroquin in Stuart, Florida. The foundation states that it is ' 'devoted to encourage education in the economics of the 164 market system and the politics offreedom in Latin America." Besides UFM, the foun dation solicits funds for such other Latin American free-market centers as the Centro de Estudios Sobre la Libertad of Argentina, the Instituto Liberal Conselho Nacional of Brazil, the Centro de Estudios Pl1blicos of Chile, the Instituto Cultural Ludwig von Mises of Mexico, and the Instituto Libertad y Democracia of Peru. UFM academic standards are high, with the university tightening those standards over the years. For example, it eliminated the traditional Latin American university practice of a ' 'second chance' , on final exams. It also made more difficult the drop ping of courses without affecting the requi site grade point average. And it raised the score that degree students must attain on an English-language proficiency test.

More striking still is the UFM standard on academic freedom. Its faculty handbook recognizes the right of professors to teach "that which is contrary to [UFM's] philos ophy or its policies, as long as it is done elsewhere and under someone else's aus pices." (My emphasis.) Thus Francisco Marroquin University openly upholds and enforces the right to decide the faculty and content for all of its courses in view of what it holds to be "true, false, useful or irrele vant. " Perhaps the most striking academic stan dard of all, though, is the UFM requirement that every student, whether of medicine, dentistry, law, education, theology, etc., take and pass courses on the economics and philosophies of Mises and Hayek, reading Spanish editions of such works as Human Action and The Road to Serfdom. Withthe university now in its 22nd year of operation, tens of thousands of UFM grad uates are having an impact on political and economic thinking in Guatemala and Latin America. Consider that UFM co-founder and first rector Dr. Manuel Ayau, who is also a businessman and former president of the international free-market Mont Pelerin Society, sought the vice presidency of Gua temala in 1990. Given that Ayau's free market positions are well known, that he 165 was chosen for the ticket is revealing, that he made the 1991 run-off election, coming up with a respectable showing at the polls, is even more revealing.

That showing is all the more surprising in view of the fact that Guatemala is a Third World country with a 9million population of predominantly Mayan and Mestizo ethnic groups, a stormy history (two military coups in the early 1980sand some 100,000killed in armed clashes between security forces and Marxist guerrillas over the past 30 years), an inflation rate of about 11 percent, and a literacy rate of around 50 percent. So UFM's faculty, staff, students, trust ees, alumni, and supporters, have their work cut out so as to maintain and spread their free-market philosophy. In 1993 Gua temala's President Jorge Serrano, initially backed by the army, seized the government. Serrano in one stroke clamped down on the press and abolished the legislature, courts, and the national constitution. But in one week the would-be civilian dictator fled the country, and Guatemala's constitution was restored. Latin American politics in the twentieth century has been anything but calm.

Even so, thanks in part to UFM and its seminal free-market, limited-government thinking, Guatemala's future is not without hope. That hope further springs from eco nomic success stories in Mexico, Chile, and Argentina-Latin American countries also with recent stormy histories which nonethe less managed to turn themselves around. How in the world then did the UFM begin? In a nutshell, inspiration and entre preneurship. Co-founder Dr. Ayau was in spired by the lectures and writings ofMises, and through him by the ideas of Leonard Read and F. A. Harper, says Leonard Lig gio of George Mason University's Institute for Humane Studies. Adds Dr. Liggio: "Thanks to Mises' teachings, Ayau and [co-founder and fellow Guatemalan] Ulysses Dent recognized that higher education is the most important con tested area for shaping social change-and the area in which the socialists have seized most of the ground." D THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY THE NEW FOREST by John Chodes R obin Hood is not a legend. He was a real person. Ifhe were alive today, he would feel just as at home in our national parks as he did in Sherwood Forest in the 1300s.And for the same reasons. The regulations that filled Sherwood Forest with outlaws and enemies of the state way back then, are at work today and may provide a clue to some consequences of our own ever-expanding environmental laws.