Originally broadcast at 10:30 a.m. ET Tuesday August 10, 2021.

Robert Doar was selected by American Enterprise Institute’s Board of Trustees to be the Institute’s 12th president, succeeding Arthur C Brooks on July 1, 2019. Doar leads one of the nation’s oldest and most respected public policy think tanks, which is dedicated to bolstering free enterprise and innovation, strengthening our communities, defending our nation’s founding values, and revitalizing the foundations of American defense. He joins the Chautauqua Lecture Series to discuss how struggling low-income Americans are faring in the current economy amid the COVID-19 crisis as well as the implications of policy enacted over the past year and going forward.

Doar joined AEI in 2014 to create a new body of work on poverty studies, after serving for more than 20 years in leadership positions in the social service programs of New York State and New York City under Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. AEI’s poverty studies program and the scholars in it have since become leading voices in the national discussion on the importance of work, family, and personal responsibility in human flourishing. While at AEI, Doar has served also as a co-chair of the National Commission on Hunger and as a lead member of the AEI-Brookings Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity. He was editor of AEI’s A Safety Net That Works: Improving Federal Programs for Low-Income Americans and a contributing author to This Way Up: New Thinking About Poverty and Economic Mobility; Work, Skills, Community: Restoring Opportunity for the Working Class and Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream.

Doar earned his bachelor’s in history from Princeton University.

Made possible by Week Seven "Presenting Sponsor" Erie Insurance, "The Lincoln Program in Applied Ethics" funded by the David and Joan Lincoln Family Fund for Applied Ethics, and the Reginald and Elizabeth Lenna Lectureship in Business and Economics.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.