Institute for Humane Studies
@theihs.org
We are building and equipping a network of 10,000+ scholars and leaders to turn the ideas of freedom into outcomes in classrooms, policy, and culture.
A mailman in Calgary whose professor saw a spark. Forty years later, a chaired professor who helped build the field of PPE. Read IHS scholar David Schmidtz's story: hubs.la/Q04rDjLr0
It Sounds Like They're Talking About You, David Schmidtz | Institute for Humane Studies
David Schmidtz spent five years delivering mail in Calgary, Alberta, before a professor told him he had a spark. Forty years later, he is a chaired professor who helped build the field of philosophy, ...
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Capping hospital, drug, and insurance prices sounds like the fix for US health care. In the @nytimes.com, IHS scholars Lorens Helmchen and Tony LoSasso say these price controls don't erase costs, they push them into longer waits and thinner care. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/o...
Opinion | This Is Not the Answer to Soaring Health Care Costs
A government bureaucrat doesn’t know how much your medicine or doctor’s visit should cost.
nytimes.com
29 thinkers who built the liberal tradition. One AI platform to talk with all of them. Classical Liberal Mind lets students and instructors hold conversations with the people behind the ideas, not just read about them. On August 6, ScholarsEdge is hosting a live demo. Sign up → hubs.la/Q04pJFRK0
ScholarsEdge University Demo: Classical Liberal Mind | Institute for Humane Studies
Get a hands-on introduction to the Classical Liberal Mind, a free AI platform that lets students, educators, and curious readers carry on conversations with 29 of the thinkers whose work built the mod...
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Mediating institutions—the associations standing between individuals and the state—help to sustain self-government. Political parties are a mediating institution. Jacobs argues that Platner's campaign collapse shows what happens when they stop doing their job. theconversation.com/graham-platn...
Graham Platner’s campaign implosion highlights the hollowness of America’s political parties and how they can be hijacked by insurgents
Graham Platner’s Senate campaign has imploded amid credible accusations of rape. A Maine political scientist looks at what happened and how the populist Platner resembles Donald Trump in key ways.
theconversation.com
A constitutional right that survives only at an official's discretion is not much of a right at all. Jonathan S. Goldstein and George A. Mocsary examine a Philadelphia case where police revoked gun permits using a standard vague enough to mean almost anything. theconversation.com/why-the-doj-...
Why the DOJ is investigating Philadelphia after police stripped gun permits from Black Panthers-inspired group
Philadelphia police revoked the carry licenses of five members of the Black Lion Party for International Solidarity, citing ‘good cause.’ Is that constitutional?
theconversation.com
Free societies ask citizens to tolerate dissent and accept limits on power. Whether new deliberative reforms build that capacity or look like they do is an open question. So is how to seek truth in the age of agentic AI. IHS has opened three funding opportunities in these areas: hubs.ly/Q04nf2g20
IHS Funds Research on Three Questions a Free Society Can't Take for Granted | Institute for Humane Studies
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Formal institutions don't sustain themselves. The values, norms, and habits underneath them do. IHS President @emilychamleewright.bsky.social argues that liberalism faces a deeper crisis than any constitutional threat. Listen to her 2025 Markets and Society keynote: www.mercatus.org/hayekprogram...
mercatus.org
What do conservative Americans actually think about democracy? Researchers sat in living rooms, attended church gatherings, and listened, and the findings push back on common assumptions. hubs.la/Q04l-b4G0
What Conservative Americans Are Actually Saying About Democracy | Institute for Humane Studies
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Deliberative interventions require further study, and IHS invites proposals from scholars working on deliberative democracy research! Potential angles include long-term effects, partisan animosity, the impact of AI, and more. Submit your proposal by July 10. theihs.org/deliberative...
Deliberative Democracy And The Effects Of Deliberation | Institute for Humane Studies
theihs.org
This July, IHS is hosting an online graduate research conference where students in the social sciences will present their projects for feedback. Free program with a $100 honorarium. Visit our website to apply for a spot: hubs.la/Q04ltt-l0
Graduate Conference for the Social Sciences | Institute for Humane Studies
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IHS invites scholars to submit proposals related to nuclear energy! We are particularly interested in funding work that tackles questions concerning regulation, institutional design, and public perception. Submit your proposal by July 1. hubs.la/Q04l21Yl0
Nuclear Energy And The Challenge Of A Growing Grid | Institute for Humane Studies
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Last week in Oslo, IHS joined the Human Rights Foundation for the 18th annual Oslo Freedom Forum, a three-day gathering of human rights defenders globally. Here, HRF Chief Legal and Policy Officer Javier El-Hage explains what the IHS relationship means to the people doing this work.
What if your students could have a Socratic exchange with Hayek, Smith, or Arendt, drawing on their actual works? Classical Liberal Mind lets your students converse with 29 canonical thinkers. Explore for free: ClassicalLiberalMind.ai
IHS is calling for proposals related to e-governance methods and digital technologies! If your research explores ways that technology can promote freedom and institutional reform, visit our website to learn more about this opportunity. Submit your proposal by July 1. theihs.org/digital-gove...
Digital Governance As Liberal Experimentation | Institute for Humane Studies
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On June 17, IHS is hosting a discussion in Washington, DC, on whether the IEEPA justifies broad presidential tariff authority. @aaronrosspowell.com will talk with @ilyasomin.bsky.social, co-counsel in the recent case, to discuss the SCOTUS ruling. Apply here to attend: theihs.org/events/ieepa...
IEEPA and the Limits of Executive Authority | Institute for Humane Studies
theihs.org
Cuba ran out of oil on May 14. Solar won't fix the problem—not because the sun isn't shining, but because a Cuban solar transition just trades one type of foreign dependency for another. IHS scholar Luisa Blanco & coauthor Isabella Elias show why only a long-term solution will do. shorturl.at/h1mPM
Cuba needs a long-term solution to its energy crisis
Short-term humanitarian aid won’t go far in alleviating Cuba’s long-term energy crisis.
shorturl.at
What does it take to keep a society capable of building solutions to problems that don't exist yet? Flourishing House was IHS's day-long gathering at @sxsw.com where scholars, builders, and entrepreneurs sat down to work through that question. Read what came out of the day. hubs.la/Q04hK4W80
Flourishing House: A Day-Long Conversation on Dynamism | Institute for Humane Studies
The common thread across the day was what it takes to keep a society capable of moving—capable of producing the buildings, the medicines, the technologies that don't yet exist.
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Most "dark patterns" are annoying, not illegal. Gregory M. Dickinson explains why consumer protection law draws a careful line between hard selling and genuine deception, and why that distinction matters for anyone who wants digital regulation to actually work. theconversation.com/dark-pattern...
Dark patterns on the web are designed to manipulate you – why aren’t they all illegal?
Encountering a website that seems like it was designed to frustrate might leave you saying ‘there oughta be a law,’ but to have a case you need to show that the site tried to swindle you.
theconversation.com
217 new professors. Nearly 100 Supreme Court citations. One million Americans with better access to health care. Those aren't separate wins. They're what happens when you invest early in the right people and give their ideas room to travel. See how the network is working. 👉 hubs.la/Q04hq5840
Annual Report 2025 | Institute for Humane Studies
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Are you developing a program for students about self-governance, civic responsibility, and pluralism in a free society? If so, you may be eligible for Free Society Grants for Undergraduate Programming. Apply by June 15. hubs.la/Q04gQm5G0
Free Society Grants | Institute for Humane Studies
Free Society Grants support faculty seeking to develop or expand undergraduate programming grounded in the liberal tradition.
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At an event with the Heterodox Academy at the Commonwealth Club in CA, @emilychamleewright.bsky.social discussed the danger of "The Great Forgetting"—when a free society functions well for long enough and loses the ability to defend the foundations that made it possible. 🔗: youtu.be/6S2_wLoh7f0
IHS has opened new research funding. We're inviting scholars to examine one of three defining questions in American life right now: the rising cost of living, digital governance, and nuclear energy's regulatory future. Learn more and apply: hubs.la/Q04ftKv40
IHS Opens Research Funding on Cost of Living, Digital Governance, and Nuclear Energy | Institute for Humane Studies
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When NBC's Chuck Todd asked about a young person losing faith in democracy, @emilychamleewright.bsky.social had a direct answer: the system has to become worthy of trust. Her remarks at Beyond the Noise II explored what that standard actually requires. Read more: hubs.la/Q04flRfy0
The System Has to Become Worthy of Trust | Institute for Humane Studies
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When the US conducted strikes on Iran, Congress was largely absent from the decision. IHS-supported scholar Sarah Burns and Robert Haswell argue that this wasn't an aberration but the latest step in a seven-decade erosion of legislative war authority. www.djournal.com/news/nationa...
Trump sidelined Congress’ authority over war on Iran – and lawmakers allowed it, extending a 75-year trend
Congress has refused to exercise oversight of the Iran war, with Republicans nixing Democrats’ attempts to exercise legislators’ power over military engagements. That’s nothing new.
djournal.com
The debate over AI and jobs often assumes a zero-sum trade-off. Christos Makridis finds that industries most exposed to AI are actually seeing stronger employment and wage growth. theconversation.com/industries-m...
Industries most exposed to AI are not only seeing productivity gains but jobs and wage growth too
Estimates of artificial intelligence’s impact on jobs and the economy range from the apocalyptic to the utopian, but the data tells a more nuanced story.
theconversation.com
The Constitution divides war powers between Congress and the president, but according to Sarah Burns, one branch has largely walked away from that responsibility. Read more:
Congress once fought to limit a president’s war powers − more than 50 years later, its successors are less willing to assert their authority
At the tail end of the Vietnam War, Congress engaged in a breathtaking act of legislative assertion, affirming that lawmakers held the power to declare war – not the president.
theconversation.com
Moral panics keep failing to bring about the collapse they promise. In a recent @liberalism.org piece, @jkuznicki.bsky.social makes a compelling case that many of the things people fear will unravel society are far harder to disrupt than the panic-merchants suggest. Read more 👇
Liberalism.org@liberalism.org · 4mo agoHuman societies can be incredibly resilient, or they can fall apart. Drawing on cultural anthropology, evolutionary biology, and economics, @jkuznicki.bsky.social argues that our ability to imagine disaster runs way ahead of the disasters we meet in the real world. hubs.ly/Q049hfbp0
Congratulations to JP Bastos (PhD, Texas Tech, '26), winner of the ninth annual Elinor and Vincent Ostrom Prize—sponsored by IHS and awarded at the Public Choice Society conference for the best combined graduate student paper and presentation.
While the Supreme Court invalidated certain tariffs, the decision does little to clarify the process for businesses seeking restitution. Peter R. Crabb and Alison Graham Larson examines the legal and economic implications of this unresolved landscape. hubs.la/Q049TpRv0
Supreme Court’s tariff decision still leaves a ‘mess’ for companies trying to grab refunds
Companies that had sued for tariff refunds are taking different approaches to getting their money back – or quitting the effort.
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New federal student loan limits could reshape access to the social work profession, and who gets the support they need. In this piece, Kaitlyn M. Sims explores how these changes may hit social work graduate students, with effects for domestic violence survivors. Read more 👇 hubs.ly/Q049v1k70
New federal student loan limits affect social work graduate students, with impacts for survivors of domestic violence in Colorado and elsewhere
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)
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