John Samples

John Samples is a vice president at the Cato Institute. He founded and directs Cato’s Center for Representative Government, which studies the First Amendment, government institutional failure, and public opinion. He is the author of The Struggle to Limit Government: A Modern Political History and The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform. He also manages Cato’s adjunct scholar program and oversees the Center for the Study of Science. Prior to joining Cato, Samples served eight years as director of Georgetown University Press, and before that, as vice president of the Twentieth Century Fund. He has published scholarly articles in Society, History of Political Thought, and Telos along with numerous contributions to edited volumes. Samples has also been featured in publications like USA Today, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared on NPR, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. Samples received his PhD in political science from Rutgers University.