Christopher DeMuth joined The Heritage Foundation as distinguished fellow in American thought in September 2023. He was president of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research from 1986–2008, D.C. Searle Senior Fellow at AEI from 2008–2011, and a distinguished fellow at Hudson Institute from 2012–2023.

DeMuth was staff assistant to President Richard Nixon in 1969–1970, working on urban and welfare policy under Daniel P. Moynihan and then as chairman of the White House Task Force on Environmental Policy. During President Ronald Reagan’s first term (1981–1984), he was administrator for information and regulatory affairs in the Office of Management and Budget and executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief. From 1977–1981, he taught at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and directed the Harvard Faculty Project on Regulation. He has practiced law (with Sidley & Austin in Chicago and at the Consolidated Rail Corporation in Philadelphia, 1973–1977), been an economic consultant (with Lexecon, Inc., 1977–1981 and 1984–1986), and was publisher and editor-in-chief of Regulation magazine (now published by the Cato Institute) in 1986–1987.

DeMuth was raised in Kenilworth, Illinois, and is a graduate of The Lawrenceville School (1964), Harvard College (1968), and the University of Chicago Law School (1973). He was a recipient of a 2017 Bradley Prize. He is chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation’s National Conservatism Conference, co-chairman of the Board of Visitors of the Federalist Society, a member of the boards of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Fund and the AHA Foundation, and a distinguished senior fellow of the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State at Antonin Scalia Law School. His writings are posted at www.ccdemuth.com.

He and his wife, Susan DeMuth, MD, reside in McLean, Virginia, and have three children and twelve grandchildren.