Former UK Prime Minister among new fellows at FIU’s Adam Smith Center

A handful of prominent conservative or right-leaning political figures from across the globe were named senior leadership fellows at Florida International University’s Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom on Monday.

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One of them was briefly prime minister of the United Kingdom.

FIU is bringing on Liz Truss, whose 49 days in the top office made her the shortest-tenured prime minister in British history, as a fellow this term alongside other political leaders.

“As former prime minister of the United Kingdom, I am looking forward to sharing my insight into the workings of government of a leading Western democracy… The wealth and wellbeing of modern countries is dependent on economic freedom, yet the threats to it are real and must be resisted,” Truss wrote in a press release.

The program allows FIU students to speak with the fellows in small, noncredit sessions that “dig into leadership, economic development, global affairs, and the hard realities of decision-making under pressure.”

“The Senior Leadership Fellows program is unlike anything else at the university. I know our students will embrace these study group sessions with curiosity, enthusiasm, and a genuine desire to grow as future leaders,” the center’s director, Carlos Diaz-Rosillo, wrote in the release.

The other fellows include James Campos, a former U.S. Department of Energy official under President Donald Trump; Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago; and Dominik Tarczyński, a Polish conservative politician and member of the European Parliament and Ecuadorian jurist Enrique Herrería, who is less associated with one side of the political aisle than the other fellows.

The center’s conservative political orientation has been a source of scrutiny and celebration since Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law in 2020.

Read more Former UK Prime Minister among new fellows at FIU’s Adam Smith Center

A recent WLRN investigation highlighted the center’s prominence as a hub for conservative politicians and thinkers across the Americas, though it has no full-time faculty or peer-reviewed research. It has received $39 million in state funding, per the report.

DeSantis has heralded the Adam Smith Center as a gem of the state, adding that it and other centers like it are needed “to prevent woke ideologies from continuing to co-opt our state universities and state colleges.”

The center’s director, Carlos Diaz-Rosillo, has made a similar argument, telling WLRN that the center’s political leanings work to provide “balance” to a higher education ecosystem that tends toward the left.

FIU President Jeanette Nunez was DeSantis’ lieutenant governor before taking the helm at FIU.

Truss and DeSantis were both at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort in Palm Beach in February, where the president and the governor golfed together.

Recently, university leadership has also been scrutinized for its punishment of seven students who protested its partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, prompting a lawsuit, as well as its hiring of one of Trump’s personal attorneys as its interim dean of the law school.

Read more Former UK Prime Minister among new fellows at FIU’s Adam Smith Center

All five senior fellows are set to appear at an on-campus event Wednesday.