Institute for Humane Studies

05/27/2026

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 affiliated scholar Luisa Blanco and coauthor Isabella Elias explain why only a long-term solution will do at The Conversation US.

Short-term humanitarian aid won’t go far in alleviating Cuba’s long-term energy crisis.

05/22/2026

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 where scholars, builders, and entrepreneurs sat down together to work through that question across health care, AI, energy, and policy. A free society is the most powerful engine for human flourishing ever built. But it doesn't run on its own. Read what came out of the day.

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.

05/21/2026

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.

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.

05/20/2026

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.

The IHS Annual Report 2025 is live. See how the network is working.

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Helping more than 1M Americans gain access to health care.IHS scholars provided the evidence policymakers needed to pass nurse practitioner independence in Wisconsin—unlocking care for rural communities.

05/15/2026

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. These grants support faculty running innovative programs including reading groups, discussion colloquia, research workshops, and more. Apply by June 15.

Free Society Grants support faculty seeking to develop or expand undergraduate programming grounded in the liberal tradition.

05/11/2026

At an event with the Heterodox Academy at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Emily Chamlee-Wright discussed the danger of "The Great Forgetting"—when a free society functions well for long enough but loses the ability to articulate and defend the very foundations that made it possible.

🔗 to watch the full event: https://hubs.la/Q04g9nW20

05/05/2026

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:

All PostsUpdatesIHS Opens Research Funding on Cost of Living, Digital Governance, and Nuclear Energy Published on May 5, 2026At America’s 250th anniversary, the institutions free societies depend on are under pressure on several fronts at once. Electricity demand is growing faster than the grid wa...

05/04/2026

When NBC's Chuck Todd asked about a young person losing faith in democracy, Emily Chamlee-Wright 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:

All PostsUpdatesThe System Has to Become Worthy of Trust Published on May 4, 2026When Chuck Todd asked IHS President and CEO Emily Chamlee-Wright what she would say to an 18-year-old who has stopped believing that democracy works, she paused.Todd had framed the question personally. A listener had wr...

04/23/2026

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.

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.

04/20/2026

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.

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.