Amjad Aun rose from the ashes of the Syrian civil war — and a crumbled apartment — to strive for freedom.

“My parents always warned me: We are in the minority inside a dictatorship,” Amjad Aun said. “And look at that photo; they were right to warn me.”

That’s the apartment Amjad grew up in, with his mother, father, sister, and brother, who passed away in 2008. They lived there until 2011, when the Syrian Civil War began and Amjad’s family had to leave everything behind and start a new life.

Syria’s demographics were at the root of it. They form a complex culture that Amjad has had to navigate since childhood — especially because he is in the minority.

Sunni Muslims comprise around 65% (though official sources are unreliable) of the country and have used their strength in numbers to oppress the Alawites, partly by smearing them as non-believers. Meanwhile, the Alawites, the group to which Amjad and his family belong, comprise roughly 15 percent of Syria, largely secluding themselves in the coastal regions. 

These days, Amjad doesn’t believe in identifying with groups but rather with individuals. He dreams of a future where Syrians are recognized for the content of their character, as Martin Luther King Jr. put it, rather than their ethnicities and religions.

But it took time — a decade or more of intellectual growth — for Amjad to understand that consciously. And, to complicate an already complicated childhood, Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s despised and now deposed president, happens to be an Alawite.

“For most of my life, it’s been a double-whammy,” Amjad said. “I couldn’t help this sense of inferiority. The news always talks about how evil and depraved Syrians are. And then to be associated with Assad … Well, I felt like I always needed half an hour of conversation to clear things out. I always felt a little shame.” 

That discomfort and sense of inferiority changed, once and for all, in 2022 — although the seeds were sown long before that.

“My dad is a surgeon; a very smart man,” Amjad said. “And when I was a kid, I remember him saying that most people join the party of Assad (the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party), but that I didn’t have to. I started looking around a bit … There were the communists, the Syrian Nationalists, and a few others, but it was like the colors of the flag were different, but they were ultimately all the same. There was always something missing. I couldn’t articulate it.”

That, too, began to change in 2022, but when war broke out back in 2011, it barely mattered what party he chose; Amjad’s hometown, Homs, was under a siege that ultimately lasted three years and resulted in more than 1700 deaths. The family escaped to the Mediterranean coast, and after four years there, fled to Germany. Amjad, the baby of the family stayed behind — a decision not entirely his own: His first application for a student visa to join his family in Germany was rejected. 

Read the post that inspired this exclusive interview with Amjad.

He remembered: “They told me, ‘We are not convinced that you’re really interested in pursuing an education.’ Which is funny, because now I’m not only doing a PhD, but it’s even ABOUT education.” (He studies the economics of competition among universities.)

Amjad hasn’t lost the chip on his shoulder from that rejection; he has refused to apply for asylum in Germany. “I don’t want them to look down on me, I don’t want their pity, I don’t want their money and I won’t take it. I’ll never take a cent from their welfare,” he said.

His visa application was, eventually, accepted, and he arrived in Germany a year after his family. He was planning to study business, management, or marketing: “The kinds of things that make money,” he said. But another turning point came when he took an introductory course called Current Issues of Economic Policy. “I just chose it because, well, I needed to choose SOMETHING,” he said.

’Lo and behold, two of F.A. Hayek’s books were required reading for that course, and, coincidence or fate, it was around then that Amjad heard about Students For Liberty. 

It was, at first, a tentative relationship.

“I honestly thought I wasn’t educated enough to join,” he said. “And it goes back to that inferiority I felt. But I started following SFL online, learning about what they do, and they did something that I fell in love with: I call it an algorithm for classical liberalism. An oriented Google. They give you tailored reading recommendations, and I’m forever grateful to SFL for putting The Law by Bastiat in my hands. After reading that and a few other things, I decided, ‘Ok, now I’m ready to see if I can join.’”

It was 2022, and Amjad was in the first year of his Master’s program, studying International Business Economics at Ilmenau University of Technology in Central Germany.

“I was very honest during my interview with [Programs Director] Florian. I had been reading A Theory of Justice by John Rawls … and I found that argument powerful. During the interview, I told him so — that the Rawlsian argument is good. He said, ‘Have you ever heard of Robert Nozick?’ Starting from that interview, SFL has been making me a stronger, smarter person.”

Amjad and Students For Liberty were a perfect match from the start. He quickly became a National Coordinator for Germany and the country’s most successful recruiter, earning the nickname The Acolyte because “I bring followers wherever I go,” he laughed.

In October of 2022, he traveled to Miami for LibertyCon International and stumbled across the recruitment table of Ideas Beyond Borders, a nonprofit that seeks to advance critical thinking, science, and civil rights in the Middle East. He friended a few of its employees on Facebook, and nearly two years later, that networking paid off with a job; Amjad recently became a part-time editor (part-time, for now, as he still has two years left in his PhD program, in addition to a research position at the Consumer Choice Center). For IBB, he ensures that its content adheres to classical liberal values and sound economics. He also writes video scripts.

Read Amjad in his own words: The Walls Have Ears

“It’s a great network that you can rely on,” he said of SFL and its method of connecting and empowering the future leaders of liberty, “and you rarely get a network of people who are not only intellectually great, but are also great to talk to. They’re friends for life.”

With his grand ambitions, he’s going to need friends for life — lots of them. When he finishes his PhD work, Amjad wants to open a university for social sciences and economics “in the classical liberal mold,” he said. And not in Germany, or the United States, where that mission might be safe, but in Syria.

“Syria is thirsty for these ideas because without them, we won’t have peace,” he said. “That’s one thing all these friends in the liberty movement helped me understand: That I can one day return to Syria and make it better. It’s not about Assad or any one person; it’s this misplaced collectivism that all the parties share, that’s what I was seeing but struggling to articulate as a kid. That’s where SFL came in: to show me that it’s not about the leader, it’s about the institutions and the education and the individuals.”

And, he added, Students For Liberty events were the first times he was seen as an individual, and the first times he saw himself as a fully confident, self-assured one.

“I never had to clarify anything,” he said, “when I had my interview or when I would go to LibertyCon or other SFL meetings … I was just Amjad, right away. I’m not scared anymore to say I’m from Syria, or that I’m an Alawite. If you’re gonna hate me because of these things I didn’t choose, that’s a you problem. I don’t need to show a certificate of good behavior. I’m an individual. Judge me for me. I will not pay the price for Assad’s doings, or for anyone else’s.”

Few places on earth need people with this attitude as badly as Syria. And now that rebel forces have overthrown Assad, Amjad’s dream of starting a university in Syria might be within reach — and his next visit home might be a happier one. His last trip to Syria was in 2019, when he returned to his childhood apartment, expecting bad things, but seeing worse.

“Everything was stolen,” he said. “It was just … incredibly sad. I remember sitting on the broken remnants, crying. Not because of the value, or the money that was stolen; it was like the war had stolen even my memories, the few memories I had with my brother.”

But, he said, “Wars aren’t forever. People want peace, and we’ll get there; we just have to work for it. I didn’t know that then, but I know it now.”

To hear more from Amjad, see the recent interview he gave to European Students For Liberty: What Is Happening in Syria – Amjad Aun