Bill Ivey is a writer, teacher, and experienced nonprofit executive trained in Folklore Studies and American History. He currently serves as Visiting Research Associate in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University and is Senior Consultant to the Mike Curb Foundation. Ivey was founding director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University (2003) and from 2012 through 2014 was consultant to the Vanderbilt’s Office of International Relations. He is past president of the American Folklore Society (2005-2007), serving that organization as Senior Advisor on China from 2008 through 2018.
From 1998 through 2001 Bill Ivey served in the Clinton-Gore administration as Senate-confirmed chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and in that capacity is credited with both increasing the agency’s budget and restoring good relations between the NEA and Capitol Hill.
Ivey is a trustee of the Center for American Progress and was a Team Leader in the Barack Obama presidential transition. He is the author of three books on culture, politics and public policy, Arts, Inc: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights (California, 2008), and Handmaking America: A Back-to-Basics Pathway to a Revitalized American Democracy (Counterpoint, 2012), Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America (Indiana, 2018).
Ivey has extensive experience in the music industry. He was director of Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum for more than two decades and was twice elected national chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences. He is a four-time Grammy Award nominee. Ivey is writer/producer on number of network television shows (PBS/CBS) and is a member of the Writers’ Guild of America (East). He makes his home in Nashville, Tennessee and Calumet, Michigan.
Education
M.A. Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University
B.A. American History, University of Michigan
Ph.D. Candidate, Folklore and History, Indiana University
Honorary Doctorates: Indiana University, University of Michigan, Michigan Technological University, Wayne State University
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