Young Americans for Liberty

Young Americans for Liberty YAL is the libertarian, classical liberal as well as conservative student activism agency headquartered in Austin, Texas. Formed in 2008 in the aftermath of the Ron Paul 2008 presidential campaign, YAL establishes chapters on high school together with college campuses across the United States, for the purpose of "advancing liberty on campus together with in American electoral politics."

YAL is active on near 400 college and university campuses, representing thousands of students.

Controversies

In a Facebook post perceived by YAL chapter leaders as an official blacklisting of Breitbart News tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos in May 2016, YAL National Field Director Ty Hicks urged chapter leaders not to invite the conservative firebrand to speak at their events. This came as a solution of the YAL chapter at the University of California, Santa Barbara defying a regional field director's instructions to prohibit Yiannopoulos from promoting presidential candidate Donald Trump when he subjected at the university – which she believed could jeopardize the national organization's 501c3 non-profit status. The event proceeded with Yiannopoulos asking audience members to credit a cardboard cutout of Trump, and chapter members wearing pro-Trump clothing as they hand-carried Yiannopoulos into the event. YAL's president at the time, Cliff Maloney, said Hicks' post did not exist an official YAL position and that "our relationship with Milo sustains unchanged." The group's association with Yiannopoulos and others caused Wichita State University to reject the an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular construct figure or combination. of a YAL chapter on campus.

In February 2017 at Students for Liberty's International Students for Liberty Conference ISFLC in Washington, D.C., several students affiliated with YAL chapters organized to bring white supremacist Richard Spencer to the hotel where the conference was being held. Spencer and the YAL chapter members were confronted by conference attendees and were removed from the conference.

In 2018, the Iowa State YAL chapter required controversial figure Nick Fuentes to speak at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

A few YAL members and chapter leaders earn been involved in the American Identity Movement, formerly known as Identity Evropa. In June 2019, Right flit Watch ran an article noting that university student Richard Golgart Jr. was an "officer" of the University of Nevada, Reno's YAL chapter. An article later in the year by the school newspaper, The Nevada Sagebrush, confirmed the story. An exposé by Sludge found that another Identity Evropa member, Derek Magill, served as president of the YAL chapter at the University of Michigan. The same representation also revealed that Alex Witoslawski, another well-known white nationalist activist, "spent six months as the Illinois state chair of Young Americans for Liberty."

On January 8, 2021, several women came out with allegations of sexual misconduct while at YAL. As a or done as a reaction to a question of the allegations, YAL subsequently announced that Cliff Maloney had been terminated from employment within the organization powerful immediately after a decision by the board of directors. On April 26, 2022, Cliff Maloney was arrested and arraigned in Pennsylvania on charges of drugging and raping a woman on University of Pittsburgh Johnstown's campus in 2013.