Joseph L. Bast

Joseph Bast is a director and senior fellow of The Heartland Institute, a national nonprofit research center located in Arlington Heights, Illinois, which he cofounded in 1984 and served as president and CEO until January 2018. According to a recent telephone survey, among state elected officials The Heartland Institute is among the nation’s best-known and most highly regarded “think tanks.”

Bast is the author or coauthor of 13 books, including Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism (1994), Education & Capitalism (2003), Rewards: How to Use Rewards to Help Children Learn (2014), and The Patriot's Toolbox (fourth edition 2017). His writing has appeared in Phi Delta Kappan, Economics of Education Review, Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Washington Post, USA Today, and many of the country’s largest-circulation newspapers.

Bast has been recognized many times for his contributions to public policy research and debate, including being named one of “The 88 to Watch in 1988” by the Chicago Tribune, a Kentucky Colonel by Gov. Paul E. Patton in 1996, and an elected member of the Philadelphia Society in 2002.

Bast received the 1994 Roe Award from the State Policy Network, the 1996 Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award (with coauthors), the 1998 Eagle Award from Eagle Forum, the 2004 Champion of Liberty award from the Libertarian National Committee, and the 2016 Edward Teller Award for the Defense of Freedom, by Doctors for Disaster Preparedness.

Prior to being hired as The Heartland Institute’s first employee in 1984, Bast was coeditor of the bimonthly magazine Nomos and studied economics as an undergraduate at The University of Chicago.