One of the earliest leaders of SFL in South-East Asia Pacific region, Haikal Kurniawan joined Students for Liberty in 2015. He graduated from University of Indonesia in 2018, with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science. His thesis is about President Ronald Reagan’s political legacy for the U.S. Republlican Party. Besides his involvement with SFL, Haikal also working as a regular writer and part-time researcher for Indonesian-based libertarian website called Suara Kebebasan (Indonesian Freedom Voice.) His main passions are the philosophical foundations and political theory of classical liberalism & libertarianism.
With other SFL leaders from Indonesia, Haikal has helped to organize the first SFL international conference in Jakarta in 2016, and again in 2017, featuring many prominent international libertarian speakers and attended by students from dozens of countries. Haikal also is an alumnus of the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) in which he attended one of IHS summer seminars in Pennsylvania in June 2017. He also has participated in several program organized by classical liberal and libertarian organizations, such as International Academy for Leadership hosted by Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit in Gummersbach, Germany, in October 2018, as well as Atlas Network’s Think Tank Essentials in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in February 2019.
Favourite figure: John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard.
Favourite Books about Liberty: On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek, The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard.
On Liberty: For me liberty is the natural desire of every single individual on earth. Everyone, regardless their skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, or any other background and identity, deserves to enjoy liberty to make decisions for themselves, to be free from aggression, and the freedom to control their own lives. No one, whoever they are, want to live under slavery & persecution, whether it’s by their own relatives, by the society, or by the government. And that’s what we should always fight for, whether for ourselves as well as for any human being on the planet.
On SFL: Joining SFL is one of the greatest decisions that I made in my life. Through SFL, I’ve met & befriends with many young freedom fighter, not only from Indonesia, but also from many countries around the world. From them, I learned so many things about the idea of liberty and how to promote it to the young generations in order to build a freer world in the future.
