Institute for Humane Studies

10/15/2026

Her grandfather went to prison for nine years for making and selling hats. Liya Palagashvili now contributes to policies that let people earn a living on their own terms, and ten states have adopted the policy framework she helped develop. Read more about her journey:

Liya Palagashvili’s early years were marked by having two hours of electricity a day and a grandfather who was imprisoned for running a side business. Today she is one of Washington's most-cited voices on the freedom to work.

10/02/2026

RSVP by October 8th.

Hannah Arendt understood that liberal democracy thrives on friendship, not on winning the argument. On October 13 at the National Press Club, Roger Berkowitz joins The Liberalism.org Show to make the unexpected case for a politics of personal and civic friendship in today’s divided moment. Apply by October 8 to attend the live recording: https://web.cvent.com/event/a10cda74-e909-4391-a796-eba283834409/register?RefId=social&utm_campaign=berkowitz_media_event&utm_content=public_registration&utm_medium=social&utm_source=social&rp=3e9243de-8646-44f2-8543-dba8a1fc65e7

09/18/2026

Professor Asma Uddin traces how Texas officials have recast mosques, prayer rooms, and Islamic arbitration as security threats rather than protected First Amendment religious exercises. The Constitution asks only whether the exercise is religious, not whether it is familiar to us. Read Uddin's full piece in The Conversation linked below:

After 9/11, suspicion of Islam hardened into an assumption in Texas that Muslim identity itself signals danger, writes a scholar of constitutional law.

09/14/2026

A postcard for an IHS summer seminar landed in John Tomasi's mailbox and he spent the $500 he saved to go. There he clashed with one of the speakers but managed to still turn his argument into an essay that became his first publication. Now he leads the Heterodox Academy. Read more about his IHS journey:

John Tomasi leads Heterodox Academy, a network of professors devoted to open inquiry on more than a thousand American campuses.

09/09/2026

Justin Gest's new book, "Democratic Drain: Global Migration and the Struggle for Democracy," argues that immigrants leave authoritarian countries because they already believe in democracy, not because they want to import its opposite. IHS supported the research and writing behind it. Joseph Politano breaks down the case in The Argument.
https://hubs.ly/Q04x2L4B0

09/08/2026

In 1989, while helping with construction of a municipal pool in East Germany, Mitch Mitchell noticed how authority without accountability can lead to misplaced restrictions. Read about how his experiences informed Mitchell’s research and work in higher education.

In 1989, Mitch Mitchell spent a summer in East Germany building a municipal swimming pool that nobody expected to be built. Today he studies the rules that decide who is allowed to practice medicine in America.

08/28/2026

CivicsMind is a free AI tutor that answers only from founding documents, the Federalist Papers, and Supreme Court rulings, and cites its sources every time. Read more:

The Institute for Humane Studies has launched CivicsMind, a free AI civics platform at CivicsMind.ai. It answers questions about the Constitution and the workings of American government from a fixed library of sources—founding documents first—and it cites them.

08/26/2026

Housing, healthcare, transportation, and energy now claim two-thirds of the average household budget. At the SPN Annual Meeting today, Alicia Plemmons of the Knee Regulatory Research Center, Yang Zhou of the University of North Texas, and IHS's Shane Courtland and Reed Dhein outlined state-level reforms that could bring those costs down.

08/25/2026

America turned 250 this year, and the questions the founders debated are still the ones students are asking.

CivicsMind provides a place to ask real questions about the Constitution, the courts, and the duties of citizenship, and get answers grounded in the founding documents, not opinion. Every answer ends with a question that sends students back to the original texts.

Free access for your classroom at https://hubs.la/Q04vc7Tp0

08/21/2026

Does your research shed light on foundational questions about the nature of liberal civic virtue? If your project explores the virtues necessary for life in a free society, we welcome you to apply for funding.

Submit your proposal by August 31:

The Nature of Liberal Civic VirtueFor FacultyLiberal democracy places a number of demands on its citizens, including accepting constitutional constraints on majorities, extending rights to people one disagrees with, and tolerating deep differences of belief and practice, to name a few. These disposi...