Henry Olsen is an Adjunct Lecturer in Politics at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C. He is an elections analyst and American political commentator, and he currently serves as a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Previously, Olsen was a columnist at the Washington Post from 2019 to 2023. He was President of the Commonwealth Foundation, Vice President at the American Enterprise Institute, and Vice President at the Manhattan Institute. He has also had publications featured in The National Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Telegraph, POLITICO, New York Post, and The Guardian. He is the author of The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism, and co-authored Four Faces of the Republican Party: The Fight for the 2016 Presidential Nomination with Dante Scala. He received his B.A. from Claremont McKenna College and his J.D. from the University of Chicago.
Recent Works
Beyond the Polls with Henry Olsen
Henry Olsen’s Website
Published Books
Olsen, Henry. The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism. S.l.: Broadside e-books, 2023.
Olsen, Henry, and Dante Scala. The four faces of the Republican Party: The fight for the 2016 Presidential Nomination. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Courses Taught
Van Andel Graduate School of Government
- Politicking and Elections
- Special Topics in Statesmanship: Ronald Reagan
- The 2026 Elections (a biennial 1-credit course on that cycle's election)