American Institutions and the American Family: A Conversation with Yuval Levin

On February 23, 2022, American Compass and Capita hosted a robust conversation drawing from Yuval Levin’s recent book on American institutions, with special attention to the impact those institutions have on the American family. In addition to Levin, speakers included Capita’s Ian Marcus Corbin, American Compass’s Wells King, and the Washington Post’s Christine Emba.

About the Speakers

Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times.

At AEI, Dr. Levin and scholars in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies research division study the foundations of self-government and the future of law, regulation, and constitutionalism. They also explore the state of American social, political, and civic life, focusing on the preconditions necessary for family, community, and country to flourish.

Dr. Levin served as a member of the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush. He was also executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics and a congressional staffer at the member, committee, and leadership levels.

In addition to being interviewed frequently on radio and television, Dr. Levin has published essays and articles in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Commentary. He is the author of several books on political theory and public policy, most recently “A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream” (Basic Books, 2020).

He holds an MA and PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

Wells King is the research director at American Compass. His writing has appeared in National Review, First Things, and The American Conservative, among other publications. His research for American Compass has been featured widely, including in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg. Wells previously worked as a policy advisor to Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) on the Joint Economic Committee and the Social Capital Project, and as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company.

Christine Emba writes about ideas for The Washington Post’s Opinions section. Before coming to The Post in 2015, Christine was the Hilton Kramer Fellow in Criticism at the New Criterion and a deputy editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit, focusing on technology and innovation. She grew up in Virginia and holds an A.B. in public and international affairs from Princeton University.

Ian Marcus Corbin is a philosopher, research fellow in neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School, and a Senior Fellow at Capita. He has studied politics, religion and philosophy at Gordon College, Oxford University, Yale University and Boston College, with an eye to the ways that deep human values function in the formation and evolution of human communities. At HMS he studies intersubjectivity, cognition and human flourishing. He is writing a book on belonging and world-making for Yale University Press. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities in the Boston area and published widely in venues such as the Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Point, and Plough. In a former life he founded and ran a contemporary art gallery in Boston’s South End.