Welcome to the Publius Foundation

Welcome to the Publius Foundation! My name is Giles Howard; I’m the founder and President of the Publius Foundation and I’m excited to share with you a new type of student organization.

We are, seemingly, the first pro-liberty student think tank in the nation. The fact that we are a student think tank means that we are staffed, managed and directed entirely by students in the Pittsburgh area. Additionally, this means that we will be tackling issues of particular importance to young people in the area and covering not only city issues but also campus issues.

We are immensely grateful to have an experienced Board of Advisors to help guide us. As valuable as they are and as grateful as we are for their help, they are not involved in our day-to-day operations.

The fact that we identify as pro-liberty is important in understanding our organization because it tells you, the reader, that we will be approaching local issues from a perspective that values personal and economic liberty. Imporantly, we are a nonpartisan organization dedicated to transcending the partisan gridlock that currently characterizes and obscures campus politics. Rather than focus on polarizing social issues, we hope to demonstrate that every Pittsburgher has an equal yet shared interest in expanded personal freedoms and smaller government.

As you look around the site, you will notice that our first few weeks of work are dedicated to exploring the merging of city and county services as a way to eliminate redundancy in government and solve Pittsburgh’s pension problem. I’ve written a larger piece explaining the merits of this subject and so I will simply say here that such a fix is our best chance to prevent the city from adopting new and burdensome taxes.

I hope that you will take the time to look around our site and explore the resources we are compiling and the information that we have made available about ourselves, our mission and how you can help us accomplish it. Our entire team is excited to provide Pittsburgh and especially young people in Pittsburgh with intelligent commentary on issues of local importance. We hope that you will continue to visit this site in the future.