INSTITUTE FOR HUMANE STUDIES

IHS’s mission is to support the achievement of a freer society by advancing the principles and practices of freedom.

And in this moment, when the forces of illiberalism are gaining ground at an alarming pace, our vision is to spark a movement that celebrates and advances the principles underlying the American Dream: political, economic, intellectual, and civic freedom.

Developing aligned intellectual talent, at scale, is at the heart of this effort. With the world’s largest network of thinkers and doers advancing the liberal project, IHS is the organization uniquely positioned to do this work.

By leveraging our core capabilities—convening, grantmaking, and unique technology capabilities—IHS is identifying and investing in the highest-potential people and projects, building and bridging high-impact research networks around the issues most relevant to a free society, and catalyzing the application and uptake of classical liberal research and solutions in the world.

For more than 60 years, IHS has put the principles of liberty and human flourishing to work in the academy and beyond.

Cultivating talent has been at the heart of this effort, and today the IHS community includes more than 7,000 professors, policy experts, and thought leaders, making it the world’s largest network of thinkers and doers advancing freedom.

Our community’s influence extends far beyond the halls of higher education, where it has reached millions of undergraduates to date. As you’ll read below, IHS uses a three-part strategic approach that ensures freedom is the way of the future by:

1.) Investing in Talent

IHS aims to be the engine of classical liberal intellectual talent, whether it’s PhD, MA,
or undergraduate talent that’s needed. Through funding and convening opportunities, we ensure our scholars have the expertise to identify scalable bottom-up solutions, drive policy wins, and develop classical liberal paradigms for understanding and solving the challenges of tomorrow.

2.) Growing Fields of Research
It’s not enough to grow world-class talent. Talented scholars need to know one another and work together on our shared ends. To do this, IHS leverages our most important asset — the community of classical liberal scholars we’ve cultivated within the academy — to catalyze research networks and scholarship in key fields so that partner organizations can focus on the last mile.

3.) Accelerating Research Production and Uptake
The last step in IHS’ s unique strategy puts the research and expertise of our scholarly network to work in advancing the cause of freedom. We leverage our unique complement of capabilities to disrupt the norms, pathways, and incentives within higher education that slow research productivity and limit scholars’ access to the data, relationships, and local knowledge they need to advance freedom in their fields.