Executive DirectorRussell Hittinger, Ph.D.
Russell Hittinger, a leading scholar of Catholic political and social thought, serves as the Executive Director of the IHE. He is a Research Professor Ordinarius in The Catholic University of America’s School of Philosophy and a member of the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, where he served on the consilium from 2006-2018. He co-directs the IHE’s Program on Catholic Political Thought and delivered the Program’s inaugural lecture, “How to Inherit a Kingdom: Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought,” in 2022.
From 1996-2019, Dr. Hittinger was the incumbent of the William K. Warren Chair of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa, where he was also a Research Professor in the School of Law. He has taught at the University of Chicago, the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Fordham University, Princeton University, New York University, Providence College, and Charles University in Prague. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Dr. Hittinger for a ten-year term as an ordinarius in the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
In January 2020, Dr. Hittinger delivered the Aquinas Lecture at Blackfriars, Oxford. The American Catholic Philosophical Association awarded him the Aquinas Medal in November 2023.
Dr. Hittinger’s books and articles have been published by the University of Notre Dame Press, Oxford University Press, Columbia University Press, and Fordham University Press, and have appeared in the Review of Metaphysics, the Journal of Law and Religion, the Review of Politics. He has work forthcoming with Catholic University of America Press.