Ellen Herman, professor of history, was codirector of the Wayne Morse Center from 2016 to 2024, having previously served on its advisory board. She is now the Center's senior scholar. Professor Herman is the author of three books that explore the relationship between politics, policy, and the human sciences in modern U.S. history: The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (1995), Psychiatry, Psychology, and Homosexuality (1995), and Kinship by Design: A History of Adoption in the Modern United States (2008). She has served as University of Oregon Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and held fellowships from the American Council for Learned Societies, Harvard Law School, and Radcliffe’s Institute for Advanced Study and was also the recipient of a major research grant from the National Science Foundation Program in Science and Technology Studies. Her experience with engaged scholarship includes participating in a series of historians’ briefs that accompanied many state-level same-sex marriage cases as they made their way through the federal circuit courts after 2010. The brief these historians submitted in Obergefell v. Hodges was cited in Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion and helped to make marriage equality a national reality in 2015. Her current research explores the history of autism.