Chairman and CEO, Freddie Mac Foundation
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
Jonathan Cohn is a partner based in Washington, D.C., who returned to Sidley after serving for several years as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice. During his tenure in the Justice Department, Mr. Cohn was in charge of the Civil Division’s Appellate Staff, which represents the federal government in its high-profile civil appeals. He also managed over 200 district court and appellate litigators in the Division’s Office of Immigration Litigation.
Mr. Cohn personally argued many of the most sensitive and consequential matters for the United States. His clients included the Department of the Treasury, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of Defense. His caseload covered administrative law appeals, commercial disputes, national security issues and suits challenging the constitutionality of agency regulations and Acts of Congress.
J.D., Harvard Law School
B.S., University of Pennsylvania
Affirmative Action: Back to Bakke? - Transcript
Ralph F. Boyd, Brian W. Jones, Gail L. Heriot, Jonathan Cohn
The Civil Rights Practice Group sponsored this panel during the 2003 National Lawyers Convention on...
The U.S. Department of Education and Two Court Decisions Probe the Limits of "Disparate Impact" Theory
Brian W. Jones
Civil Rights Practice Group Newsletter - Volume 3, Issue 2, Summer 1999
The impact of so-called "high-stakes tests"—in both the employment and educational contexts—is an issue of...
A Supreme Fallacy: "Diversity" and the High Court
Brian W. Jones
Civil Rights Practice Group Newsletter - Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 1999
So civil-rights advocacy has come to this. In the wake of the recent revelation that...
Brian W. Jones reviews Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson by Marshall Frady
Brian W. Jones
Civil Rights Practice Group Newsletter - Volume 1, Issue 1, Fall 1996
It begs no great imagination to say that race today remains the fundamental dilemma confronting...