From 1999 to 2012 Calhoun was President of the Social Science Research Council. At the SSRC Calhoun emphasized the public contributions of social science. His views are explained in his essay "Towards a More Public Social Science", which first appeared in the SSRC's 2004 "President's Report" and has been translated, reprinted and widely circulated on the web. After September 11, 2001 he launched an initiative on "Real Time Social Science" which included an essay forum that attracted more than one million readers. This continued with work on the Privatization of Risk, Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences Program, and now Haiti, Now and Next (examining the impact of the 2010 earthquake on Haiti's social and political future). His conversations with Paul Price have received wide circulation, podcast as Societas.