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The Gladstone T. Whitman ’49 Endowment Fund provides Lafayette students with an opportunity for full-time summer internships or participation in seminars and workshops at nonprofit institutions that study free markets and economic liberty.
Three students took advantage of the opportunity offered by the Whitman Fund this summer. Economics and business major Lori B. Anderson ’06 (Haworth, N.J.) worked at the Institute for Humane Studies in Arlington, Va. She spent six weeks working at the institute’s offices with several staff members and two weeks at seminars at Duke University and University of Denver.
Anderson found the “Liberty and Society” seminars at Duke especially fulfilling. She assisted the seminar director with logistics and attended several engaging lectures.
“What was cool,” she says, “is that I got to meet some really extraordinary students ranging from undergrad, grad, Ph.D., and people out of school completely. They were from all over the world and really made the experience something special.”
She says that the seminars were eye-opening and is now writing an honors thesis on the nature of economic freedom.
Vicente Arguello ’08 (Bedford, N.Y.) and mathematics-economics major David Fishman ’07 (Pittsford, N.Y.) interned at Foundation for Economic Education in New York. The foundation’s five-week programs include daily discussions and biweekly lectures where students from around the world learn about philosophies of freedom, including those of F. A. Hayek, recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics, and other prominent libertarian theorists. As interns, Arguello and Fishman assisted in setting up the seminars and then attended the daylong presentations that typically spilled over into the evenings.
Arguello says that the internship helped him “become more aware of what is going on with government today. This new awareness of government interactions is what will help me in the future because I will be more conscious of what the government is doing.”
Fishman echoes these sentiments. “The programs stress the importance of the notion of the ‘seen’ and ‘unseen,’ which is a significant consequence of any intervention.”
He adds that he is grateful that Whitman’s generosity offered him “a great learning experience.”
Since the program’s inception six years ago, the Whitman Fund has funded ten full internships and several shorter learning experiences. It is administered by Donald Chambers, Walter E. Hanson/KPMG Professor of Business and Finance. Anyone aware of other nonprofit organizations with an emphasis on free markets that might serve as an appropriate host organization for one or more summer internships is encouraged to contact him at chambers@lafayette.edu or (610) 330-5303.
Vincente Arguello ’08 (L-R), David Fishman ’07, and Lori Anderson ’06, who served internships with The Foundation for Economic Education and Institute for Humane Studies, with Professor Donald R. Chambers (second from right).