Lanhee Joseph Chen (/ˈlænhiː tʃɛn/; Chinese: 陳仁宜; pinyin: Chén Rényí; born July 4, 1978)[1] is an American political scientist, lawyer, and academic who has served as a member of the Amtrak Board of Advisors since December 2024.

Chen currently serves as chair of the board of directors of El Camino Health, a major hospital in the Silicon Valley.

[9] In September 2024, Chen was nominated by President Joe Biden to a seat on the Board of Directors of Amtrak.

[5] At age seven, Chen moved with his family to Rowland Heights, California, where he was raised in a large Taiwanese community.

[17] After high school, Chen entered Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

In 2003, Chen was the Winnie Neubauer Visiting Fellow in Health Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.[26] In 2015, Chen was named one of the POLITICO 50, a list of the top "thinkers, doers, and visionaries transforming American politics".

On September 9, 2024, President Joe Biden announced he would appoint Chen to the Amtrak Board of Directors for a term of five years.

[29] Chen testified before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on 25 September.

He has appeared as a roundtable guest on ABC This Week, Face the Nation, Meet the Press, and Fox News Sunday and is a guest on top television political programming, including MSNBC's Morning Joe and MTP Daily, and CNN's State of the Union and The Lead with Jake Tapper.

He was also one of the lead commentators on Bloomberg TV's 2014 election night coverage with Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.

In addition to his roles at the Hoover Institution, School of Law, and Public Policy Program, he is also an affiliated faculty member of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law in the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies[34] and on the Faculty Steering Committee of the Haas Center for Public Service.

[35] In 2017, Chen served as the William E. Simon Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University.

[41] He was named the inaugural director and currently serves as a senior adviser to the Aspen Economic Strategy Group, a project of the Aspen Institute co-chaired by Henry Paulson and Erskine Bowles, aimed at gathering, in a non-partisan spirit, a diverse range of distinguished leaders and thinkers to address significant structural challenges in the U.S.

[42] In 2015, Chen was selected as a member of the Committee of 100, a membership organization of Chinese Americans dedicated to the spirit of excellence and achievement in America.

[46] He contributed to a conservative, market-based replacement for the Affordable Care Act, which was published by the American Enterprise Institute in 2015.

[49] Chen criticized the Obama administration for its "pivot" to Asia, arguing that it lacked substance and was not pursued sufficiently robustly.

[53] He supports an expanded U.S. military presence in East Asia and an expansion of U.S. free trade agreements with Asian countries.

[49] Chen accompanied Mitt Romney on his campaign swing through Britain, Israel, and Poland in August 2012[55] and was one of the advisers who approved Romney's criticism of President Obama in the wake of the attack on the embassy in Libya on September 11, 2012, and the resulting death of J. Christopher Stevens.