Mary Kate Cary currently teaches small seminars in the University of Virginia’s Politics Department: “Political Speechwriting,” and “Democracy Out Loud,” which studies the greatest speeches in American political history. Ms. Cary co-taught both “Election 2020” and “Election 2024” alongside a Democratic professor, leading the only political science class in America taught from both sides of the aisle. USA Today covered this ground-breaking class. Ms. Cary was previously a Practitioner Senior Fellow for Presidential Studies at UVA’s Miller Center, serving from 2017 to 2023.
In 2021, Ms. Cary served on UVA’s Committee on Free Expression and Free Inquiry, which produced the University’s policy on free speech. She is the founder and director of Think Again, a new center at UVA that promotes free speech, viewpoint diversity, critical thinking, and intellectual humility through student-facing programming. Ms. Cary is currently serving as the chair of the Heterodox Academy’s campus community at UVA, a faculty organization which stands for open inquiry, constructive disagreement and viewpoint diversity in higher education. She is the founder of the UVA Student Oratory Contest, in which students write and deliver short speeches on American democracy in the Dome Room of the Rotunda; judges are former White House speechwriters. In 2024, the Heterodox Academy awarded her its Open Inquiry Leadership Award.
Mary Kate served as a White House speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush from 1989 to early 1992, helping to write over 100 Presidential addresses by him. She is currently filming video presentations on the greatest speeches in American history and the stories behind them, for digital platforms and podcasts.