Thor Halvorssen

Thor Halvorssen founded the New York-based Human Rights Foundation. Halvorssen is founder and CEO of the Oslo Freedom Forum, an annual global gathering described by The Economist as a “spectacular human-rights festival… on its way to becoming a human-rights equivalent of the Davos Economic Forum”. Halvorssen founded the Moving Picture Institute in 2005 and has produced several films that focus on freedom such as the Kurt Vonnegut short story “Harrison Bergeron” and award-winning documentaries about the Chinese, Soviet, Hungarian, and Estonian revolutions. He is most recently working on the development of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, a liberty-themed sci-fi cult classic written by Robert Heinlein.

Prior to his work at HRF and MPI, Halvorssen was the first Executive Director and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) from its founding in 1999 until 2004. Thor has lectured at universities across the world on matters of liberty and his opinions and views have appeared in numerous venues including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and many others. He is a lifetime member of the National Association of Scholars and the Federalist Society. He is a Visiting Professor at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín.