Atlas once cultivated academia before abandoning it for direct student outreach

Evidence

In the mid-2000s, Atlas broadened its academic ambitions. Through the Teach Freedom Initiative (TFI), Atlas helped a select group of professors to sponsor speakers, craft workshops, and find adequate fellowships and internships for their students. Through TFI, Atlas organized conferences to showcase the contributions of free market oriented academic centers—hoping to help along their ultimate transformation into think tanks. The Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders (FSSO) was oriented to research designed to support and reward academic scholarship in the tradition of Austrian methodological individualism. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 569

Categorization

• SEED: The shift from funding academic centers to bypassing professors entirely tracks how neoliberal movement strategy evolved once academia proved intractable.
• XREF: connects to: The Atlas network shifted from celebrating outsider status to pursuing academic legitimacy — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 603; Atlas pivoted from attacking universities to funding free-market courses within them — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 568; The neoliberal movement abandoned academia for direct campus organizing — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 570

Broader Connections

• The neoliberal movement abandoned academia for direct campus organizing #qualifies (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 570