The Prof. mr. B.M. Teldersstichting (Telders Foundation) is the Dutch liberal think tank, affiliated to the political party VVD. The foundation is named after Benjamin Telders, a lawyer and philosopher who was chairman of the Liberal State Party (a predecessor of the VVD) and who during World War II was arrested by the German (nazi) occupiers; he died shortly before the liberation in concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. The Teldersstichting was founded in 1954 as a completely independent liberal think tank, by a board under the chairmanship of Johan Witteveen, a professor in economics who would become vice-prime minister of the Netherlands in the sixties and director of the International Monetary Fund in the seventies. In 1972 the Telders Foundation established a link with the VVD, but as organisation and in policy formulation the think tank remained independent. Current president of the board is Frits Bolkestein, who in the nineties was the most successful leader of the VVD ever and who acted as European Commissioner in the years 2000-2004. Director of the Telders Foundation is Patrick van Schie, a historian who wrote his dissertation on the history of Dutch liberalism from 1901 until 1940.

The Telders Foundation publishes policy papers and books on all kind of political and societal topics, from the market economy to environmental issues and from crime fighting to defence policy. On top of this, the foundation publishes, in cooperation with a commercial book publisher, books for a wide audience on the history of liberalism and its leaders, on the political philosophy of liberalism and on the leading minds in liberal (political and economic) theory. Each year several conferences and seminars on various topics are held. An annual Telders Lecture is held, in which we invite an influential scholar or politician from abroad in order to stimulate the debate in the Netherlands with original liberal thoughts and insights. Talented, promising students of Dutch (and Belgian) universities are selected to take part in the liberal summer school of the Telders Foundation, which is annually held during the last week of August. The quarterly journal of the Telders Foundation is Liberaal Reveil, which is edited by researcher Fleur de Beaufort. Every two months our electronic newsletter Vrijpostig is being published. Most of our publications and debates are in Dutch, although some are available in English.

The Telders Foundation does not choose for one exclusive variant of liberalism, but the classical thinkers of liberalism always appear to be an important source of inspiration. For us the freedom of the individual is most fundamental. Therefore, we consider it as essential that a free and democratic society, in which there is no accumulation of power and public power is always democratically controlled and legitimized (checks and balances), will survive. It is not the American type of liberalism (that is: as it has developed in the latest decades) that we embrace, but a liberalism that is vigorously opposed to socialism, religiously based politics and other kinds of communitarianism.

Contact person: Dr. P.G.C. (Patrick) van Schie, vanschie@teldersstichting.nl