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. (View Full Curriculum Vitae)
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. View the related video, Leadership and the Challenge of Campus Speech and download your copy of A Framework for Campus Free Speech on the same page.
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:
mediainquiries@theihs.org.
Curriculum Vitae
Emily Chamlee-Wright Curriculum Vitae
Videos
Third-Party Publications
- Orange County Register: Naming and Reclaiming the Liberal Ideal
- The Hill: Fall of the Berlin Wall
- ChiefExecutive.net: CEOs Must Start Selling Capitalism (Quoted)
- Inside Higher Ed: The Need to Presume Good Faith in Campus Conversations and Debates
- NY Times: Trump Signs Executive Order Protecting Free Speech on College Campuses (Quoted)
- How Do We Fix It podcast: The Importance of Taking Socialism Seriously
- Wall Street Journal: Please, Take Socialism Seriously
- Washington Post: Respect for the individuals is at the heart of communities
- InsideSources: When Students Are Confused About Freedom of Expression, Flip the Script
- Society: Governing Campus Speech: a Bottom-Up Approach
- The Hill: Tolerance and civility, not love, will heal our society
- USA Today: What Mike Pence, The Handmaid’s Tale and Mad Men have in common
- Wall Street Journal: Smith Appreciated Value of Intangible Labor
- Inside Higher Ed: The Art of Disagreeing
- Society: Self-Censorship and Associational Life in the Liberal Academy
- USA Today: Here’s How to Strengthen Our Democracy: Practice Humility
- Wall Street Journal: How Louisiana Reopened After Hurricane Katrina
- The Hill: If We Seek Resilience, We Need Liberty, Not Nationalism
Articles as a Forbes Contributor
- What Soviet-Era Production Can Teach Us About Innovation in Higher Ed
- How a Liberal Arts Education Helps Felons Become ‘Civic Beings’
- Artful Teachers Teach First Amendment Thinking
- Toleration and the Winding Road to Pluralism
- Coaching Students Through the Self-Censorship Dilemma
- The Liberal Academy in an Illiberal Age
- Progress On Campus Free Speech?
- What Higher Ed Leaders Can Learn From Walmart
- Can Professors ‘Only Connect’ In The Age Of Zoom?
- Living Up To The Liberal Promise
- In a Pandemic, We Need Philosophers Too
- It Takes More Than An Election To Guard Against Authoritarianism
- At Beloit, A Bottom-Up Approach To Setting Covid-19 “Behavioral Expectations”
- Every Campus Is Different. In A Pandemic, That’s A Strength.
- Tumultuous Times Have Us Looking For Windows And Mirrors
Thoughts and blog posts
- OpenInquiryProject.org: The Problem with Top-Down Approaches to Speech Governance
(Originally appeared in Chronicle of Higher Education) - Medium: A Third Way on Campus Speech
- LinkedIn: In Defense of Permissionless Invitation
- LinkedIn: What’s Missing in the Campus Speech Debate: Discursive Ethics
- LinkedIn: Freedoms of Speech and Expression Do Not Come with a Guarantee of Comfort
- Medium: Charting a Course of Intellectual Freedom
- Medium: What ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ can teach us about Campus Speech and Social Change
- Medium: Paradigms for Social Change — The Vienna Circle
Videos and Podcasts
- Ideas in Progress podcast: Women and the Classical Liberal Tradition, part 2
- Ideas in Progress podcast: Women and the Classical Liberal Tradition, part 1
- FeeCon 2019 presentation: From the Bottom-Up: Emily Chamlee-Wright on Spontaneous Order
- Big Think: Become an Intellectual Explorer
- She Thinks podcast: Is Free Ever Free?
- Big Think: Self Command: Learn This Powerful Thinking Tool
- How To Fix It podcast: The Importance of Taking Socialism Seriously
- Cato: What Should Fall 2020 Look Like on College Campuses?
