CEVRO Institute

CEVRO Institute was established on 15 September 2005, by CEVRO – Liberal-Conservative Academy, a nonpartisan think tank created in 1999 to provide political education, democracy assistance and capacity building for democratic leaders and parties from around the world. CEVRO Institute is a small private college located in the center of the city of historical Prague.

The Institute's main goal is to provide quality education in the area of social sciences. The college faculty includes professors, senior lecturers and specialists in the areas of law, economics, political science, and international relations.

Mirek Topolánek, then Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, presided over the opening of the university, praising CEVRO's founding as a testament to the free enterprise system.

Your university – and I want to sincerely congratulate you on successful accomplishment of your project – is evidence that capitalism is not equal to egoism. This false equation had been hammered into our heads for many years. And some people would like to hammer it into our heads again. And you stuck up for yourselves. You stuck up for yourselves, because you know that capitalism equals to freedom. Freedom of possession, as well as freedom of research. Freedom of working and freedom of using fruits of one's work, whether they are fruits of material or spiritual character. .

— Mirek Topolánek, November 1, 2006[2]

As of 2016, the current president is economist Josef Šíma, and the board chairman is Ivan Langer. Tomáš Pojar, the vice president for International Relations of the CEVRO Institute, is the former Ambassador of the Czech Republic to Israel.

In the fall of 2016, the school launched a unique PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) program taught in English with international faculty from both Europe and the United States. Specialist courses include Studies of Transition, Austrian Economics, and International Politics. The first applications were accepted on 20 February 2016.[3]

The central facility of CEVRO Institute is in a historic building in downtown Prague.[4]

CEVRO Institute publishes New Perspectives on Political Economy, a peer-reviewed, semi-annual, bilingual, interdisciplinary journal. Its main objective is to enhance the understanding of private property, market, and individual liberty-based perspectives in the respected sciences, mostly from the Austrian School.

CEVRO Institute has hosted various speakers, including economist Jesús Huerta de Soto, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer, economist Peter Boettke, Saxo Bank CEO Lars S. Christensen, American jurist Guido Calabresi, law professor Richard Epstein, noted anarchist David D. Friedman, economist and Cato Institute scholar Daniel J. Mitchell, economist Edward Stringham, environmentalist Terry L. Anderson, and economist and historian Hans-Hermann Hoppe.[5]

Faculty

• Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, Emeritus professor of economics at Ohio University, and adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute[6]
• Michael Munger, professor of economics at Duke University and adjunct scholar at Cato Institute
• Benjamin Powell, director of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University and senior fellow at the Independent Institute
• Peter Boettke, professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University; Director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center
• Cyril Svoboda, former Czech deputy prime minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and head of the Christian and Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People's Party
• Boudewijn Bouckaert, professor of law, former Dean, Faculty of Law, University of Ghent
• Alexandr Vondra, former Czech minister, former Ambassador to the United States, former adviser to President Václav Havel

Alumni

• Pavel Bělobrádek, deputy prime minister of Science and Research in the cabinet of the Czech Republic
• Vít Jedlička, Czech politician, president self-declared libertarian micronation Liberland

• CEVRO Institute Website
• CEVRO Institute PPE Program
• Association Européenne des Facultés Libres Member Website
• CEVRO Website