Bestselling Author Matthew B. Crawford Joins Independent Institute as Future of Freedom Fellow

Oakland, CA—Independent Institute has appointed author and scholar Matthew B. Crawford as a Future of Freedom Research Fellow for 2025-2026. As part of Independent’s Semiquincentennial “Liberty at 250” initiative, Crawford will assemble a group of writers to produce a special supplement on the future of liberty to be included with the fall 2026 issue of The Independent Review.  In addition, he will continue to write and publish the philosophically informed cultural criticism for which he has a growing and influential audience.

Crawford also continues his affiliation as a Senior Fellow with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, although he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He grew up in Berkeley. Crawford is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (Penguin, 2009), Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road (HarperCollins, 2020), and The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015). Crawford’s books have been translated into eleven languages.

Crawford is probably most known for his book Shop Class as Soulcraft. In it, he tells his story of transitioning from a career at a think tank, into opening a motorcycle repair shop. Finding satisfaction working with his hands, his life took a new trajectory combining thinking with doing.

Majoring in physics as an undergraduate at U.C. Santa Barbara, Crawford then earned a doctorate in the history of political thought at the University of Chicago. He writes on his popular Substack website, Archedelia. He has been called a modern Renaissance Man: an auto mechanic and philosopher on topics such as government coercion, human interaction in the modern tech-centered society, and the effects of AI on capitalism and culture. He has also published articles on ancient Greek philosophy, neuroscience, and the philosophy of science.

Like Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Crawford delights in the self-reliance of getting ones’ hands dirty, with direct engagement with the world of material objects. Crawford writes that such devotion comes with “some measure of independence—both from purveyors of magic and from cultural despair.” Like Persig, he thinks it good to find one’s “own accommodation with modern life, governed by neither a reflexive aversion to technology, nor a naive faith in it,” as he wrote in Smithsonian magazine, reprinted as the forward to the 50th anniversary edition of Zen.

From his perch as a Future of Freedom Fellow at the Independent Institute, Matthew Crawford will continue to reflect broadly on issues of human character, meaning, and technology in his Substack and in other venues. In addition, he heads an eclectic team of writers creating for Independent a collection of essays on the occasion of America’s 250th Anniversary.  These forward-looking essays—addressing the fate of liberty in modern technological society—will comprise a special supplement to the fall 2026 issue of Independent Institute’s quarterly journal of political economy, The Independent Review.

“As our country celebrates its first 250 years, it’s important to look not only backward but also forward, to ensure that future generations retain the blessings of liberty announced in our Constitution,” said Graham Walker, President of Independent Institute. “We welcome Matthew Crawford’s penetrating and unexpected insights as part of our commitment to human worth and dignity.”

For more information, contact Robert Ade, [email protected], or (510) 635-3690.

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