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Edward Hudgins

Senior Fellow

Hudgins’ work as a senior fellow focuses on a wide range of issues, including Postal Service reform, Free to Choose Medicine, and various economic, education, and regulatory issues.

Prior to becoming a Heartland senior fellow, Hudgins was Heartland’s research director. As research director, Hudgins set the organization’s research agenda and priorities; worked with in-house and outside scholars to produce policy studies and books; contributed his own research; and worked with Heartland staff to promote Heartland’s work.

Before joining Heartland, Hudgins was the director of advocacy and a senior scholar at The Atlas Society, which promotes the philosophy of reason, freedom, and individualism developed by Ayn Rand in works like Atlas Shrugged. His latest Atlas Society book was The Republican Party’s Civil War: Will Freedom Win?

While at The Atlas Society, Hudgins developed a “Human Achievement” project to promote the synergy between the values and optimism of entrepreneurial achievers working on exponential technologies and the values of friends of freedom.

Prior to this, Hudgins was the director of regulatory studies and editor of Regulation magazine at the Cato Institute. There, he produced two books on Postal Service privatization, a book titled Freedom to Trade: Refuting the New Protectionism, and a book titled Space: The Free-Market Frontier.

Before this, Hudgins was a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, specializing in trade and regulatory issues.

Hudgins also worked at The Heritage Foundation as deputy director for domestic policy studies, and as director of the Center for International Economic Growth, where he pioneered the concept of an Index of Economic Freedom.

Hudgins has appeared on major TV networks, including CSPAN, Fox News, MSNBC, The History Channel, and CNN, and his op-eds have been featured in papers like the Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and Philadelphia Inquirer.

Hudgins has a B.A. in government from the University of Maryland, an M.A. in political theory from American University, and a Ph.D. in political philosophy and international political economy from the Catholic University of America. He has taught at universities in the United States and Germany.