Barry, Norman P. 1944-2008 (Norman Barry, Norman Patrick Barry)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born June 25, 1944, in Northampton, England; died of complications from multiple sclerosis, October 21, 2008. Political scientist, political theorist and economist, educator, and author. Barry's political leanings were in the direction of classical liberalism and capitalism. That was the brand of political studies that he taught at the University of Buckingham from 1982 to the end of his life. Barry reportedly enjoyed the political and intellectual freedom of the only British university to be funded solely by private funds, such as tuition, and wholly without government sponsorship. At Buckingham he taught social and economic philosophy—particularly the free-market philosophy of twentieth-century Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek. He expounded his own views on modern political theory, business enterprise and business ethics, and comparative studies of the political Left, where he himself had begun, and the Right, where he had moved gradually over a period of decades. During the years that Barry experienced British socialism and Leftist economic planning at work, he became increasingly disillusioned with the nationalization and collectivist appendages attached to government policies, and his changing views were reflec-ted in his teaching and his writings. Barry spent most of his career at Buckingham, with occasional visitations at Bowling Green State University and the Liberty Fund of Indianapolis, Indiana. The constant element of Barry's convictions remained a dedication to "all scholarly aspects of freedom and free markets," as he once told CA. In 2005 he was honored by the Liberty in Theory Lifetime Award of the Libertarian Alliance of Los Angeles, California. Barry's writings include An Introduction to Modern Political Theory (1981), On Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism (1986), The New Right (1987), Classical Liberalism in the Age of Post-Communism (1996), and Business Ethics (1998).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), November 24, 2008, p. 52.