Set Up Your Google Drive Folder
Before you begin preparing your application materials, please create a Google Drive folder where you will upload all of your documents as you complete them. Follow these steps to set up your folder:
Create a new folder in Google Drive: Go to Google Drive, click the "+ New" button on the left side, and select "New folder." Name the folder with your full name and "Hazlitt Fellowship Application" (e.g., "Jane Smith Hazlitt Fellowship Application").
Set folder permissions to open access: Right-click on the folder and select "Share." In the sharing settings, change "Restricted" to "Anyone with the link."
Keep this folder open: As you complete each application material listed below, upload it to this folder.
If you encounter any issues setting up your folder or adjusting permissions, please refer to Google's help documentationon sharing files and folders.
After your folder is ready, prepare the following materials and upload each one to your Google Drive folder.
Cover Letter and CV
Create a single PDF document that includes both your cover letter and CV. Your cover letter should be placed above your CV in the same document.
In your cover letter, please include a letterhead at the top of the document with your contact information (name, email address, phone number, and city/country of residence). Read this Substack post about the fellowship. In your cover letter, tell your story and explain why, based on the Substack post, you would be a great fit. Discuss your experience studying and communicating the ideas of liberty. Also include:
A biographical paragraph we can use in published material about you.
Whether you will be available to attend the webinars for the upcoming cohort. Please refer to the fellowship landing page for specific dates and times.
Your other commitments, and whether you will be able to fully commit to the fellowship, including assignments and content creation work, on top of your other time commitments.
URLs to your active social media profiles
The URL to your writing sample, if it’s online (see below).
URLs to any published articles, videos, or other content you'd like us to also review.
Your CV should outline your educational background, relevant experience, skills, and accomplishments.
Save your combined cover letter and CV as a PDF file and upload it to your Google Drive folder.
Portrait
Upload a high-quality headshot photograph of yourself in PNG format to your Google Drive folder. We will use this photo in published materials about you.
Writing Sample
Please provide one article as your writing sample. This should be a polished piece that demonstrates your ability to communicate ideas about liberty effectively.
If your article is published online, include the direct URL to the article in your cover letter.
If your article is not published online, upload a PDF of the article to your Google Drive folder.
Your writing sample should showcase your best work and give us insight into your writing style, analytical thinking, and ability to engage with ideas related to liberty.
Speaking Exercise
To help us evaluate your speaking ability, economic reasoning, and readiness for fellowship exercises, record a video of yourself following these steps:
Select three key words from each sentence of the "source text" by Henry Hazlitt provided below.
On a piece of paper, draft a "key word outline" with each set of three key words on its own line.
Referring only to your key word outline, record a video of yourself retelling the message of the source text in your own phrasing. Do NOT read from the source text or from any script.
In the same recording, after your retelling, explain in your own words how policymakers and commentators commit the broken window fallacy when analyzing a current economic policy issue. Demonstrate your ability to connect economic principles to real-world policy debates.
Save your speaking exercise as an MP4 file and upload it to your Google Drive folder.
Source Text
(Excerpted from Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt)
A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker’s shop. The shopkeeper runs out furious, but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers, and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it. How much does a new plate glass window cost? Fifty dollars? That will be quite a sum. After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business? Then, of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $50 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $50 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor.
Now let us take another look. The crowd is at least right in its first conclusion. This little act of vandalism will in the first instance mean more business for some glazier. The glazier will be no unhappy to learn of the incident than an undertaker to learn of a death. But the shopkeeper will be out $50 that he was planning to spend for a new suit. Because he has had to replace a window, he will have to go without the suit (or some equivalent need or luxury). Instead of having a window and $50 he now has merely a window. Or, as he was planning to buy the suit that very afternoon, instead of having both a window and a suit he must be content with the window and no suit. If we think of him as a part of the community, the community has lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being, and is just that much poorer.
The glazier’s gain of business, in short, is merely the tailor’s loss of business. No new “employment” has been added. The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier. They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor. They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made. They see only what is immediately visible to the eye.
Submit Your Application
Once you have completed all other sections of this application form, uploaded all your application materials to your Google Drive folder, and opened up the folder’s access permissions as instructed above, paste the Google Drive folder's URL in the field below and click submit.