A Tribute to David Boaz

Today, the think tank community mourns the loss of David Boaz, Distinguished Senior Fellow and former longtime Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute. Having first been exposed to Boaz and his work during my time on Capitol Hill, I was privileged to meet him for the first time during an interview for a position at Cato in 2017 and had the honor of calling him a colleague during my time as the Institute’s Director of Government and External Affairs from 2017 to 2022.

Though deep from the outset, my appreciation for Boaz has grown significantly over the years, and it continues to this day. He has shaped much of my thinking on policy and, as a colleague, regularly challenged me—in the best of ways—to always be better. It is a story that I know is shared by countless others who encountered Boaz and his work over the past several decades. Not only was Boaz a trailblazer and ardent defender of libertarian thought, he modeled—and insisted upon—the high standards and dedication to principle over partisanship that every think tank should emulate.

Once I decided to join the R Street Institute in 2022, Boaz was one of the last people to stop by my office at Cato for a long conversation, and ultimately, to bid me farewell and wish me good luck in my next adventure. But fortunately for me, it didn’t end there; we stayed in touch. Among other interactions, he was a frequent respondent to The Intersection’s trivia challenge (always with the correct answer, of course) and even suggested a couple of trivia questions I might pose in the future.

Speaking for the R Street Institute in particular, some of us here had the pleasure of working with him during our various tenures at Cato, many more of us knew him personally and interacted with him professionally, and most of us at least knew of him and his relevance within our line of work. But even those who never knew of him have benefited from his many contributions to the public policy community.

R Street Senior Resident Fellow Adam Thierer, another Cato alum, recently published the following on his blog (Read Thierer’s entire tribute here):

David Boaz was a giant in the liberty movement and a huge inspiration to me personally over the past three decades. We first met back in 1993 and I was immediately struck by what a remarkable communicator of ideas he was. He was an equally gifted writer and I always looked to his essays and books for inspiration to help improve my own work…

David loved books and the books he wrote himself were particularly important to spreading the message of human liberty far and wide. One of my favorite things to do whenever I visit a used bookstore is to snap a picture of a book by someone I know and then send it to them to let them know where I found it. I would sometimes find David’s books on random shelves across the globe and send him a pic to tell him that his ideas were out there making a difference in the world. He would usually respond, “Well, if that was the case, then why did someone sell it!” But then I’d send him pictures of the inside chapters, all marked up and underlined to let him know that someone in this world really did take it all to heart. He made a difference to them, and to all of us…

Another Cato alum, Corie Whalen, had this to say about Boaz:

No one had higher standards than David, and this is largely what set him apart from so many intellectually wayward actors claiming the mantle of libertarianism. David has been described as “liberty’s north star,” which is an apt summary of his impact.

I recall a time when he and I discussed whether we should accept a certain media request because, technically speaking, we didn’t quite have an expert on the topic at hand (though many of Cato’s scholars could have handled it more than proficiently). I initially viewed the issue through the lens of satisfying the journalist, but David urged me to take a step back and consider whether the answer we could offer at that time would be unimpeachable. As it turned out, David was right. We did still have more work to do in order to offer the absolute best analysis.

David always played the long game when it came to promoting liberty. He saw every angle, and his intellectual rigor was equal to his grasp of changing political winds and how to best navigate new landscapes while holding true to principle. He was, and will remain, unrivaled.

Over the next several days, many in the public policy community and beyond will reminisce about their various interactions with Boaz over the years. When discussing the need for a piece like this to honor Boaz and his many contributions, R Street’s president, Eli Lehrer, shared: “He was one of the few bigwigs who unfailingly took my calls directly when I was a very junior reporter and was also one of the people who encouraged me to start RSI … he was a giant by any measure.”

He was a giant, indeed, and because of his many contributions to the public policy community and the superb example he set—whether we ever worked at Cato or even consider ourselves libertarians on most days—we’re all David Boaz libertarians today.