Graham Walker, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Independent Institute in Oakland, California.  He is a constitutional scholar and experienced higher education executive who also holds an appointment as Senior Research Scholar at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton.

Walker’s scholarly interests include comparative constitutionalism, political philosophy, theology and education. He is presently analyzing the theory and practice of conscience rights. Developing the forgotten distinction between liberalism and constitutionalism, he examines the ways in which mature liberalism slips the leash of constitutionalism and—paradoxically—ends up undermining individual rights in the name of community values.

Walker served as President of Patrick Henry College for nearly nine years starting in 2006. Before that he served Oklahoma Wesleyan University as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the University. He was a member of the Faculty Advisory Council for the “Values & Capitalism” initiative at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and serves on the board of directors of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. Earlier, he held faculty appointments at the University of Pennsylvania, and The Catholic University of America. He was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and an AEI Visiting Scholar in Religion and Philosophy. Walker earned graduate degrees from the Graduate Institute of International Studies (of the University of Geneva, Switzerland), and from the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA). He authored the books Moral Foundations of Constitutional Thought and The Ethics of F.A. Hayek. His articles and essays have appeared, among other places, in Public Discourse, Nomos, Polity, The Review of Politics, The Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law, and The Los Angeles Times.