Bruce Chapman

Founder and Chairman of the Board of Discovery Institute

Bruce Kerry Chapman is an author and former elected and appointed official who serves as Chairman of the Board of Discovery Institute, a public policy think tank he founded in Seattle in 1990/91. He also is a fellow in the institute’s Chapman Center on Citizen Leadership. In 2018, Mr. Chapman’s latest book appeared, entitled, Politicians: The Worst Kind of People to Run the Government, Except for All the Others. It critiques the growing power of “middlemen” in politics — bureaucracy, media, academics and special interests — and the loss of responsibility by the people’s elected representatives.

Born in Evanston, Illinois (December 1, 1940), Mr. Chapman attended public schools in Monmouth, Illinois and was graduated from Harvard College, with honors, in 1962.  At Harvard, he and George Gilder started a magazine, later moved to Washington, DC, called Advance:  A Journal of Republican Thought. In 1965/66 Mr. Chapman was an editorial writer at The New York Herald Tribune, writing on politics and the military draft. He authored (with George Gilder) The Party That Lost its Head (published 1966), an indictment of the 1964 Goldwater campaign’s abandonment of the civil rights issue and a call for “conservative answers” to public problems, rather than mere opposition to liberal policies.

Mr. Chapman’s book, The Wrong Man in Uniform, (1967), and its paperback successor (Our Unfair and Obsolete Draft), made a popular and influential case against conscription and for an all-volunteer military. In 1969, he authored the report of the Washington State Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Civil Disorders.

Mr. Chapman was an elected member of the Seattle City Council (1971-75), innovating on historic preservation and championing parks development.  As Secretary of State of the State of Washington (1975-81) he headed the state’s Bicentennial committee, promoted the teaching of civics and wrote a statistical report comparing the 50 states. He was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor in the Republican primary of 1980. Appointed by President Reagan as Director of the U.S. Census Bureau (1981-83), he later served on the White House Staff as Deputy Assistant to the President (1983-85), where, among other things, he promoted family policy initiatives. In 1985 he was nominated and confirmed as U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Organizations in Vienna, where he served until 1988. He was a Hudson Institute fellow in 1989/90 in Indianapolis, before founding Discovery Institute in Seattle.

Mr. Chapman and his wife, Sarah, live in Seattle, where their two grown sons and their families also reside.

Archives

Campus Antisemitism Continues

Bruce Chapman
January 13, 2025
A largely failed attempt to place ads for a pro-Israel book in ten universities' student papers illustrates the double standard by which many students as well as faculty and administrators treat anti-Israel protestors, on one hand, and Israel supporters on the other. Every university approached recently by Seattle-based Discovery Institute on behalf of The Israel Test by George Gilder, a pro-Israel work published by Encounter Books, has experienced anti-Israel demonstrations. Some had riots. Yet most were treated by authorities with appeasement or even encouragement.

Israel’s Coming Attack Will Also Assist Ukraine

Bruce Chapman
October 25, 2024
The next battle in the Middle East may be played out in the skies above Iran. The outcome obviously is meant to help Israel, but may well assist Ukraine, too. If "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," Israel and Ukraine are friends already, and even quiet allies.

His Two Cents’ Worth: The Penny Is Useless

Bruce Chapman
September 10, 2024
Discovery Institute Board member Edmund Moy is quoted by The New York Times in an article entitled "America Must Free Itself from the Tyranny of the Penny," (September 1, 2024), noting that he tried, as the Director of the U.S. Mint from 2006 to 2011, to retire one of the oldest, and surely the tiniest, members of the American currency.

An Interview with George Gilder Asks, Can You Pass the Israel Test?

Bruce Chapman and George Gilder
July 29, 2024
Anti-Israel protests in universities, antisemite propaganda on social media and riots in American cities have given shocking new force to old prejudices about Jews and Israel. In The Israel Test, newly revised and republished by Encounter Books, George Gilder answers the antisemites, and explains the meaning of Israel as the most economically dynamic, democratic and pro-Western state in the Middle East — and a crucial US economic and defense ally.

Published Today: The Conservative Environmentalist

Bruce Chapman
April 16, 2024
Published today is Benji Backer's book on how government ties up sound conservation policy in red tape that immobilizes real reform. Benji is a University of Washington grad I was proud to have as a Chapman Fellow at Discovery Institute a few years back.

Myth and Reality of Israel’s Success

Bruce Chapman
October 16, 2023
Allysia Finley of the Wall Street Journal does us all a favor in her column, “Our enemies are the CEO’s…Our comrades are in Gaza,” describing the labor Union SEIU units that are seeking to portray Israel’s vital and pathfinding  economy as the product capitalism and colonialism. They get the historical facts wrong, she writes, quoting at length from George Gilder.

Myth and Reality of Israel’s Success

Bruce Chapman
October 16, 2023
Allysia Finley of the Wall Street Journal does us all a favor in her column, "Our enemies are the CEO’s…Our comrades are in Gaza," describing the labor Union SEIU units that are seeking to portray Israel’s vital and pathfinding  economy as the product capitalism and colonialism. They get the historical facts wrong, she writes, quoting at length from George Gilder.

The Story of Mental Illness in One Graph

Bruce Chapman
July 18, 2023
Discovery fellow Robert Marbut provides this telling graph on the correlation of falling support for psychiatric beds and the rise of the mentally ill population in prison. Deinstitutionalization since the ‘60’s went overboard and helped create the current crisis. 

To Fix Homelessness, Stop Fixating On Housing

Bruce Chapman
May 30, 2023
Homelessness affects cities across the country, but it’s not just a local issue, though media cover it that way. Nor is homelessness mainly about housing; rather, it’s largely about untreated mental illness and drug addiction. Consistently misdiagnosed, homelessness is being wrongly addressed. And the policies that give rise to homelessness largely come from Washington, D.C., not localities. A bill called “Housing PLUS” has been introduced in Congress by Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., with 22 sponsors, to start to rectify these policies. A national mental illness crisis has been building since the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill began in the 1960s. Drug addictions also have increased and most surveys show that the “homeless” are often both mentally ill and …

To Fix Homelessness, Stop Fixating On Housing

Bruce Chapman
May 30, 2023
Homelessness affects cities across the country, but it’s not just a local issue, though media cover it that way. Nor is homelessness mainly about housing; rather, it’s largely about untreated mental illness and drug addiction. Consistently misdiagnosed, homelessness is being wrongly addressed.

To Fix Homelessness, Stop Fixating On Housing

The homeless are often both mentally ill and addicted. Yet the government persists in treating homelessness as almost entirely a housing issue.
Bruce Chapman
May 30, 2023
Homelessness affects cities across the country, but it’s not just a local issue, though media cover it that way. Nor is homelessness mainly about housing; rather, it’s largely about untreated mental illness and drug addiction.

God’s Grandeur

The Catholic Case for Intelligent Design
Ann Gauger, Michael J. Behe, Michael Egnor, Jay W. Richards, Fr. Michael Chaberek, J. Budziszewski and Bruce Chapman
April 18, 2023
We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. Pope Benedict XVI The world — indeed, the universe — is charged with grandeur. Everything speaks of its beauty, power, and purpose — of its exquisite and intelligent design. Yet many scientists today flatly deny that the world was intelligently designed. Even some Christian scientists and theologians downplay or deny the evidence nature supplies of intelligent design, especially in biology. This thought-provoking anthology shows why they are wrong, why it matters, and why intelligent design provides a compelling way to reconcile science and faith in today’s culture. God’s Grandeur challenges the …