Dr. Emily Chamlee-Wright is the president and CEO of the Institute for Humane Studies, which supports and partners with scholars working within the classical liberal tradition to advance higher education’s core purpose of intellectual discovery and human progress.
She joined IHS in 2016 with an accomplished record as an academic leader, scholar, and educator. From 2012 to 2016 she served as provost and dean at Washington College and was previously the Elbert H. Neese Professor of Economics and associate dean at Beloit College. Emily earned her PhD in economics from George Mason University. She is a former W.K. Kellogg National Leadership Fellow and received the excellence in teaching award from Beloit College and a Distinguished Alumna Award from George Mason University. She has six books to her credit, including Liberal Learning and the Art of Self-Governance and The Cultural and Political Economy of Recovery.
Emily is an expert on the complex and often fraught topic of free speech policy and governance in higher education. Under her leadership, IHS has developed two resources:
A Framework for Campus Free Speech Policy, which provides guidance to assist higher education leaders in proactively preparing their campuses to address issues and controversies related to freedom of speech and thought.
A Framework for Campus Crisis Management, a practical guide that provides principled advice on managing speech-related crises that arise on college campuses.
Areas of interest that Emily regularly writes and speaks on include:
- Classical liberal ideas pertaining to markets, culture, and higher education
- Championing a “third way” in the campus speech debate that attends to both free speech principles and the ethics of productive and civil discourse
- Advocating for a professor-driven approach to campus speech governance
- The meaning and purpose of a liberal education
For media inquiries or speaking engagement requests, please contact:
Camille Walsh at cwalsh@ihs.gmu.edu or (504) 338-8785.
Bottom-Up Approach to Free Speech on Campus
- Governing Campus Speech: a Bottom-Up Approach
- The Problem with Top-Down Approaches to Speech Governance (Originally appeared in Chronicle of Higher Education)
- A Third Way on Campus Speech
- In Defense of Permissionless Invitation
Free Speech
- What’s Missing in the Campus Speech Debate: Discursive Ethics
- Freedoms of Speech and Expression Do Not Come with a Guarantee of Comfort
Free Speech and Social Change
- Charting a Course of Intellectual Freedom
- What ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ can teach us about Campus Speech and Social Change
- Paradigms for Social Change — The Vienna Circle
