A Conversation with Trey Dimsdale, AHA Foundation’s New President

May 12, 2025

At the start of this month, Trey Dimsdale joined AHA Foundation as our new President. A prolific writer and thought leader, Trey was most recently the founding Executive Director of the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy and counsel at First Liberty Institute. He brings a wealth of experience at a critical moment for AHA, as we strengthen existing programs and introduce new initiatives to advance our mission of restoring Liberal freedoms and ideals.

AHA: We are very excited to welcome you to the team and to share this interview with our supporters. To start, what inspired you to take on the role of AHA President?

Trey Dimsdale: I have been a big fan of Ayaan for years. I’ve read her books and followed her public commentary and firmly believe that it really doesn’t matter which room it is, she’s always the smartest person in it. So, being a part of an organization that brings to life advocacy related to her work is very attractive. And coming to work alongside a talented team and supportive board that truly have made the world a better place completes the package. 

AHA: How have your experiences—both academic and professional—equipped you to lead AHA in its mission?

Trey Dimsdale: By training I am a lawyer, but I have spent my entire career in educational, social, and cultural advocacy. My legal education has certainly been an asset. My primary work in each of these contexts has been in building strategic approaches that target the parts of public life where real change can be realized. I also have a graduate degree in ethics, but I am not an academic. However, I have a lot of experience working with academics and finding ways to make their work accessible and actionable. 

On a practical level, the organizations I have led have done a lot of really eclectic work. We’ve published an academic journal and hosted academic conferences. We’ve designed impactful programs for students at all levels. We even published an industry-leading data project. There are so many facets to the struggle to advance the cause of liberty–it is not a single-front battle. I am looking forward to bringing my experience in all of these areas to the work of the AHA Foundation.

“I remember taking classes from professors and with peers who just did not seem to be intellectually curious. Their worldview was calcified and inflexible. It was not open to revision or growth as they gained more knowledge. They seemed incapable of learning even though that was what we were all there to do.”

AHA: Was there a defining moment that solidified your commitment to liberty? How does that experience shape your vision for AHA?

Trey Dimsdale: I can’t say that there was one moment when I was converted to the cause of liberty. I came to it almost intuitively, I think. I didn’t start college thinking that I would build a career in this space. But my experience in college did clarify for me where I stood on these issues. I remember taking classes from professors and with peers who just did not seem to be intellectually curious. Their worldview was calcified and inflexible. It was not open to revision or growth as they gained more knowledge. They seemed incapable of learning even though that was what we were all there to do. 

I remember a fellow student in one senior-level class who had a droll, devil-may-care affect who always had some quip that was invariably illiberal in some way. Other students were mesmerized by him in awe of how smart he seemed while expressing his disdain for Ronald Reagan or capitalism, or the corruption of Eastern Europe as it was being democratized in the decade following the fall of Communism. The professor heartily laughed along with him. I was so perplexed. I thought I was missing something because everything he said seemed so vapid and one-dimensional. I always had a hunch that there had to be more than the “established orthodoxy” that was uncritically received by my peers from mostly close-minded professors. I think my life since then has been chasing that hunch. 

I got a world-class legal education, too, but we never explored anything that I would consider a deeper question. Again, I always had a suspicion that there was more to the law. Why did we never discuss the limits of the power of the law to shape society? The intersection of law and morality? The relationship of the law with democratic norms? Years later, a friend of mine who is a Christian theologian asked, “Do you people really believe that litigation solves every human problem?” The irony is that among lawyers I am often accused of believing just the opposite–that litigation can’t solve enough problems. 

I had to learn the philosophy of law on my own time and well after law school, and I think that this set me on a certain trajectory. Clear, consistent, principled thinking that is grounded and substantive is something that I value. One thing you can be certain of is that when AHA launches a new project, it will have been thoroughly vetted and systematically tested before it sees daylight.   

“Antisemitism is on the rise globally and, quite frankly, the response from Western governments and supranational organizations has been dismal and disheartening. We have a lot of work to do on every front with regard to this pernicious issue. And we must be even more diligent and strategic than the enemies of liberty if we hope to defeat it and to preserve freedom.”

AHA: In your 2023 Law & Liberty article “On the Need for Scholars and Warriors,” you highlighted challenges to liberty, including rising antisemitic crimes, one of AHA’s new focus areas. Since then, how has the landscape of liberty changed, and what do you see as the biggest threats today?

Trey Dimsdale: I think that even in the short time that has passed since I wrote that essay it has become clear just how fragile the West’s liberal tradition is. Antisemitism is on the rise globally and, quite frankly, the response from Western governments and supranational organizations has been dismal and disheartening. We have a lot of work to do on every front with regard to this pernicious issue. And we must be even more diligent and strategic than the enemies of liberty if we hope to defeat it and to preserve freedom. 

The late Roger Scruton, a thinker who figures prominently in Ayaan’s own intellectual journey, often pointed out that tradition is not a set of dead, rote customs. Tradition is the aggregate wisdom of the solutions to timeless social problems. There have always been conflicts between neighbors that need to be solved, ways of ordering life that produce peace, and spoken and unspoken rules that produce prosperity. Lord Acton famously described liberty as the “delicate fruit of a mature civilization,” and we are proving far too eager to discard fundamental commitments of liberalism and then expect a culture of liberty to remain. “Old” doesn’t mean “antiquated.” Often “old” corresponds with “effective,” or else it would have already been abandoned. 

Even more problematic is that we’re in a period in which we are forced to abandon history as a source of wisdom. Civilization is the very imperfect product of very imperfect trial and error from time immemorial to the present. We now approach the past from a posture of purity and stain. We must embrace history (and historical figures) in all of its glory and all of its shame and be willing to learn from the past’s triumphs and mistakes. We can’t jettison Shakespeare and Goethe in order to make the “Western canon” more diverse. We should be adding to the canon things that shape and direct our civilization, no matter the source. It is not a virtue to be culturally illiterate in the name of progress, especially when that illiteracy results in a total inability to appreciate and maintain an open, liberal society that creates space for people from many diverse backgrounds to flourish. 

“Our political advocacy should focus on using power to protect individual liberty so that individuals are free to invest their time, resources, talents, and energy in the smaller communities—the ‘little platoons,’ as Roger Scruton called them—that animate society and provide vehicles for us to coordinate our efforts toward alleviating suffering, advocating for a cause, or any number of other social undertakings.”

AHA: You’ve argued that advocacy for liberty must combine efforts in both the political realm and cultural life. Why do you believe this integrated approach is vital? 

Trey Dimsdale: I am glad that you’ve asked about that essay because, in many ways, it explicitly lays out what I believe to be the best approach to creating and preserving a culture of liberty. It is an unrealistic romantic notion that you can “write the songs of a nation and then not care about who writes the laws,” as the Scottish proverb says. We must care about both. 

In my view, political advocacy is at its best when it results in guardrails that allow for citizens to come to the public square as they are with varied beliefs, priorities, and commitments. As important as it may be, government is merely a means to an end—human flourishing. It should never be an end in itself. Friedrich Nietzsche warned of a world in which all that exists is power, so in that world the only institutions that matter are the institutions through which power can be wielded. Well, that institution is the state, and the last century, and even the present, are utopian experiments that eradicate every institution other than the state. Those experiments, like the Soviet Union and the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge, left tens of millions dead. 

We should do everything we can to avoid living in that world, which is why civil society is so important. Families, communities of faith, fraternal organizations, and other civic organizations are not held together by coercion. What makes these social institutions so valuable is that they are largely voluntary and organized around issues that matter to the individuals who voluntarily become a part of these communities. Our political advocacy should focus on using power to protect individual liberty so that individuals are free to invest their time, resources, talents, and energy in the smaller communities—the “little platoons,” as Roger Scruton called them—that animate society and provide vehicles for us to coordinate our efforts toward alleviating suffering, advocating for a cause, or any number of other social undertakings. 

“At the same time we have to expand our educational programs not only as they pertain to the women’s issues that have always been a part of AHA’s priorities, but as it pertains to understanding the nature and the source of liberal values, the threats of Islamism and wokeism, and the evil of antisemitism.”

AHA: What practical steps can AHA Foundation take to ensure its initiatives are impactful across both political and cultural spheres?

Trey Dimsdale: AHA has already been so effective in its work protecting vulnerable girls and women from FGM, forced marriage, and honor killings. The culmination of Amanda’s and Michele’s work in this area has produced fruit even in the first days of my time here as the District of Columbia has explicitly criminalized FGM and now Maine has just passed a ban on child marriage. There is still work to be done on this front, unfortunately. And now that it has become clear that many of our laws are inadequate for addressing antisemitism in many of our institutions, we will invest energy to rectify that, too.

At the same time we have to expand our educational programs not only as they pertain to the women’s issues that have always been a part of AHA’s priorities, but as it pertains to understanding the nature and the source of liberal values, the threats of Islamism and wokeism, and the evil of antisemitism. 

I think that political action and cultural advocacy are inextricably intertwined. Unless these things are symbiotic, we simply will be unable to realize any type of durable change. I have a bias toward cultural advocacy in large part because politicians have attention spans measured in election cycles rather than in generations, and our work is generational. We can’t expect to reach certain goals in our lifetimes. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t see progress in the short term. 

“We have to engage students. We have an obligation to help them think about the past and the future, which existed and will exist without them. This demographic is always looking for a way to make a mark, so that gives us a certain advantage. Some of them have been captured by illiberal ways of thinking, but not all of them. And some of them can be convinced to reconsider.”

AHA: What do you see as the challenge of engaging younger Americans, who are increasingly exposed to and influenced by illiberal ideologies, in the advocacy for liberty? What unique opportunities does this present? 

Trey Dimsdale: One of the problems that has emerged in the last several decades is a rather selfish attitude about almost every area of life, but most fundamentally toward our civilizational heritage. We receive what we have as an inheritance from those who have come before us, but hold it as trustees for those who will come after. Too many people live as if we are the pinnacle of history. This is the case with regard to our institutions, but also things like natural resources and the environment. This means that while my generation holds power and controls institutions, we must be careful not to limit the options or handicap future generations in some way. This requires a great deal of humility on our part. 

While I have just extolled the virtues of the past as a source of wisdom, I have to acknowledge that our Founding Fathers would have nothing to add to the conversation on how to regulate AI, for example. And our children and children’s children will know much better than we will about the contemporary social challenges of their own time. Therefore, we have an obligation to prepare them. 

Unfortunately, enemies of liberty have a head start. Things that are new, innovative, or promise a certain freedom from the constraints of the past are always things that rising generations will find attractive–and I know this from experience as a member of a formerly rising generation. This isn’t merely theoretical.

I think that organizations like ours are forced to play catch-up. We have to engage students. We have an obligation to help them think about the past and the future, which existed and will exist without them. This demographic is always looking for a way to make a mark, so that gives us a certain advantage. Some of them have been captured by illiberal ways of thinking, but not all of them. And some of them can be convinced to reconsider. Organizations like AHA, where thinking and doing merge, are perfectly situated to inspire the next generation to act and harness the youthful enthusiasm that can be a powerful force for good. Our programs can help them to imagine what an open and liberal future can be and to develop their own generation-specific strategies to realize that future. 

“We’ll bring individuals and groups with wildly divergent backgrounds to the same table. That will mean that when it makes sense, we’ll work with the religious and the non-religious. We’ll work with conservatives, libertarians, and progressives.”

AHA: Collaboration plays a pivotal role in advancing liberty. How essential is it for AHA to build partnerships with government entities, community leaders, and other like-minded organizations?

Trey Dimsdale: Over the course of my career the single greatest frustration that I have had is that organizations that should be partners function as if they are competitors. Sure, there is competition for donor support, access to power, and “market share” for influence. But an overemphasis on this is the primary reason, I think, that so many liberty-focused organizations have been largely ineffective in the last generations. Too many leaders are in executive positions to audition for their next job–a larger organization, a political appointment, or a media platform.

Well, the AHA Foundation is not going to play that game. We are neither the oldest nor the largest organization fighting for liberty. But we do have an advantage over every other peer organization: Ayaan’s convening power. It is hard to imagine a more courageous and confident public figure when it comes to the important issues that concern us. But we aren’t leveraging that powerful tool for ourselves, but for the cause. There is no reason for AHA to adopt an adversarial posture toward organizations that are doing great work and are oriented toward the same ends we seek. We absolutely will pull oars with others to realize our goals. There is too much at stake to do otherwise.

I like to think that one of the things that I do best is to build counterintuitive coalitions and we’ll do that at AHA. We will have positive relationships in Washington no matter which party is in power. We’ll bring individuals and groups with wildly divergent backgrounds to the same table. That will mean that when it makes sense, we’ll work with the religious and the non-religious. We’ll work with conservatives, libertarians, and progressives. However, I think the partners that will be the most valuable are those who are working on the front lines of religious freedom and economic freedom, as well as those focused on freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Liberty is unitary–all of these more specific freedoms are merely concrete applications of a single idea. We need partners who are doing great work in each of these areas. 

As to government partnerships, in an age of bitter partisan division, I hope that AHA will remain a beacon of reasonable, principled engagement across the political spectrum. AHA already has excellent relationships in Washington, as well as at the state level across the country. I hope that those good relationships only grow and expand.

“The work of the AHA Foundation is important and AHA will be doing great work beyond the current moment, the current staff, and the current leadership. The next generation will face fresh challenges to preserving a culture of liberty, and as we address current challenges, we will be building a platform from which future leaders can address their own challenges.”

AHA: Looking ahead, what legacy do you hope to build as AHA President? How do you plan to balance addressing immediate challenges with laying the groundwork for a long-term commitment to liberal freedoms? 

Trey Dimsdale: I noted earlier that we have to approach the present as trustees always mindful of what has come before and who comes next. That is my approach to this role. The work of the AHA Foundation is important and AHA will be doing great work beyond the current moment, the current staff, and the current leadership. The next generation will face fresh challenges to preserving a culture of liberty, and as we address current challenges, we will be building a platform from which future leaders can address their own challenges. 

This requires that we know why we are doing everything that we are doing. I hate to say that a lot of really effective work done in the immediate past was not grounded enough in durable commitments. There was no conceptual framework to anchor that work or those positions. So, AHA’s work is and will continue to be principled rather than pragmatic. Principles are timeless and can be applied to many different issues. In fact, there is a sense in which our work is focused on defending the principles that are collectively known as Liberal ideals. But those ideals are not really first principles, and those first principles require defense, too. 

Among the mandates that I have coming into this position is to expand not just the programmatic priorities, but also the base of support. We are situated at a critical moment in history. Every generation has believed that to some extent, and there are many ways in which they’ve been right. In order to meet the challenges of the moment that Ayaan has done such a remarkable job of identifying and articulating, we need to expand in terms of resources and staff capacity. In the coming months, we will be bringing on board more talented people and providing all the support that we can so that they can use their creativity and gifts to fulfill our mission.

AHA: Thank you, Trey, for sharing your insights and vision for the future of AHA. We appreciate your thoughtful perspectives and leadership as we work together to advance our mission. Wishing you success in this new role—we look forward to the impact we’ll create together.

Trey Dimsdale: Thank you! I’m honored to be part of AHA and excited to collaborate with this incredible team and our many partners. I look forward to working together and making a lasting impact.