Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity
Linda Chavez is Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity. She has published opinions and columns in newspapers across the country and appears regularly on cable news. Chavez is the author of the three books: Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation, An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal, and Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics. She has been honored by the Library of Congress as a "Living Legend" and as nominee for Secretary of Labor by President George W. Bush.
Chavez has held many appointed positions and has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. Among her appointed positions has been Chairman, National Commission on Migrant Education (1988-1992); White House Director of Public Liaison (1985); Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1983-1985); and member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (1984-1986). Chavez was also the Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Maryland in 1986 and was elected by the United Nations' Human Rights Commission to serve a four-year term as U.S. Expert to the U.N. Sub-commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.
Chavez earned her BA from the University of Colorado.
Senior Fellow, Center for Equal Opportunity
Eastland is an accomplished journalist who was editor of The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., before working in the Reagan administration as a speechwriter for Attorney General William French Smith and as director of public affairs for Attorney General Edwin Meese.
Eastland was later a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the editor of Forbes MediaCritic. In 2001, he became publisher of The Weekly Standard and, in 2013, an executive editor. He is now a contributing editor at the magazine. Eastland has published seven books, including two on race preferences, Counting by Race (1979) and Ending Affirmative Action (1996). "The Center has done exceptional work on matters involving race and ethnicity," said Eastland, "and I look forward to contributing to its efforts in behalf of equal protection under the law."
CEO president and general counsel Roger Clegg recalled his work with Eastland during their days together in the Reagan Justice Department: "Terry is an expert on the media, a skilled editor, and a brilliant writer." CEO chairman and founder Linda Chavez said, "Eastland's writing on affirmative action has been among the most incisive and compelling on the issue over the years and will add depth to CEO's work in this arena."
Director, Educational Opportunities Project, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Brenda Shum is Director of the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under law where she oversees complex litigation, public policy advocacy, and programs designed to ensure educational equity for all students and to eliminate discriminatory practices in schools. sHer practice focuses on the enforcement of civil rights in both K-12 and higher education systems. She is part of the legal team representing underrepresented minority students and applicants defending race conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. She was one of the lead counsel in successful litigation which challenged Maryland's failure to desegregate its discriminatory system of higher education, and she served as part of the legal team that settled a lawsuit against the Louisiana State Department of Education which challenged the state's failure to address disability discrimination in New Orleans charter schools. As Director of the Educational Opportunities Project, Brenda works to ensure that federal and state policy protects our most vulnerable students, including students of color, students with disabilities, low-income students, and English Language Learners. Brenda serves on the steering committee for the National Coalition for School Diversity, the Education Civil Rights Alliance, and the Dignity in Schools Campaign. She also oversees the Parental Readiness and Empowerment Program, an initiative designed to support parents and families in becoming more effective advocates for their children, and Let Us Learn, an initiative that protects the right of all students to enroll in public school regardless of immigration status.
Freelance Journalist and Author
Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.
Taylor has coauthored three books. All have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor authored The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson authored Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.
Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, guilt-presuming campus rape processes, journalistic bias, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, civil liberties, national security, torture, campaign finance, education, impeachment, and other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's best legal journalists and is known for challenging both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.
Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court. He wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Daily News and longer commentaries for RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the (late) Weekly Standard, National Review, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Time and other magazines. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.
Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1977-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.
Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
President, Asian American Coalition for Education
Mr. Yukong Zhao is a distinguished Chinese American civil-rights activist, the President of the Asian American Coalition for Education, and the author of the book, The Chinese Secrets For Success: Five Inspiring Confucian Values.
In May 2015 Mr. Zhao and other Asian American leaders united 64 Asian American organizations and filed a civil-rights complaint against Harvard University. As the largest joint action taken by Asian-American communities in recent history, the plaintiffs contend that the complaint helped expose Ivy League colleges’ systematic discrimination against Asian American applicants to the national and world stage. The complaint is currently under the investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In addition to continuing the fight for Asian American children's equal education rights, Mr. Zhao also writes columns in Orlando Sentinel, Forbes, The World Journal, Sing Tao Daily and IndiaWest to promote Chinese culture and advance Asian American social progress.
Senior Research Fellow, Center for Equal Opportunity
In D.C. area for over 20 years, Althea Nagai, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Center for Equal Opportunity. She has conducted numerous statistical analyses on racial and ethnic preferences in higher education, including racial and ethnic preferences in undergraduate education at five public universities in Virginia, the University of Michigan, two Arizona universities, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two Ohio universities, and various law and medical schools. In addition, she has written two essays for CEO focusing on Asian Americans, “Too Many Asian Americans,” and “Harvard Investigates Harvard.”
She has also has done work on other statistical studies in the field of social policy. Her first study was a content analysis and critique of the national history standards with John Fonte and Lynne Cheney. She has also conducted studies on marriage, religion, and family structure; on adolescent risk behavior; on philanthropy and social change; and on American elites (American Elites, with Robert Lerner and Stanley Rothman, 1996 Yale University Press).
Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity
Linda Chavez is Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity. She has published opinions and columns in newspapers across the country and appears regularly on cable news. Chavez is the author of the three books: Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation, An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal, and Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics. She has been honored by the Library of Congress as a "Living Legend" and as nominee for Secretary of Labor by President George W. Bush.
Chavez has held many appointed positions and has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. Among her appointed positions has been Chairman, National Commission on Migrant Education (1988-1992); White House Director of Public Liaison (1985); Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1983-1985); and member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (1984-1986). Chavez was also the Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Maryland in 1986 and was elected by the United Nations' Human Rights Commission to serve a four-year term as U.S. Expert to the U.N. Sub-commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.
Chavez earned her BA from the University of Colorado.
Senior Fellow, Center for Equal Opportunity
Eastland is an accomplished journalist who was editor of The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., before working in the Reagan administration as a speechwriter for Attorney General William French Smith and as director of public affairs for Attorney General Edwin Meese.
Eastland was later a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the editor of Forbes MediaCritic. In 2001, he became publisher of The Weekly Standard and, in 2013, an executive editor. He is now a contributing editor at the magazine. Eastland has published seven books, including two on race preferences, Counting by Race (1979) and Ending Affirmative Action (1996). "The Center has done exceptional work on matters involving race and ethnicity," said Eastland, "and I look forward to contributing to its efforts in behalf of equal protection under the law."
CEO president and general counsel Roger Clegg recalled his work with Eastland during their days together in the Reagan Justice Department: "Terry is an expert on the media, a skilled editor, and a brilliant writer." CEO chairman and founder Linda Chavez said, "Eastland's writing on affirmative action has been among the most incisive and compelling on the issue over the years and will add depth to CEO's work in this arena."
Director, Educational Opportunities Project, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Brenda Shum is Director of the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under law where she oversees complex litigation, public policy advocacy, and programs designed to ensure educational equity for all students and to eliminate discriminatory practices in schools. sHer practice focuses on the enforcement of civil rights in both K-12 and higher education systems. She is part of the legal team representing underrepresented minority students and applicants defending race conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. She was one of the lead counsel in successful litigation which challenged Maryland's failure to desegregate its discriminatory system of higher education, and she served as part of the legal team that settled a lawsuit against the Louisiana State Department of Education which challenged the state's failure to address disability discrimination in New Orleans charter schools. As Director of the Educational Opportunities Project, Brenda works to ensure that federal and state policy protects our most vulnerable students, including students of color, students with disabilities, low-income students, and English Language Learners. Brenda serves on the steering committee for the National Coalition for School Diversity, the Education Civil Rights Alliance, and the Dignity in Schools Campaign. She also oversees the Parental Readiness and Empowerment Program, an initiative designed to support parents and families in becoming more effective advocates for their children, and Let Us Learn, an initiative that protects the right of all students to enroll in public school regardless of immigration status.
Freelance Journalist and Author
Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.
Taylor has coauthored three books. All have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor authored The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson authored Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.
Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, guilt-presuming campus rape processes, journalistic bias, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, civil liberties, national security, torture, campaign finance, education, impeachment, and other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's best legal journalists and is known for challenging both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.
Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court. He wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Daily News and longer commentaries for RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the (late) Weekly Standard, National Review, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Time and other magazines. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.
Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1977-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.
Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
President, Asian American Coalition for Education
Mr. Yukong Zhao is a distinguished Chinese American civil-rights activist, the President of the Asian American Coalition for Education, and the author of the book, The Chinese Secrets For Success: Five Inspiring Confucian Values.
In May 2015 Mr. Zhao and other Asian American leaders united 64 Asian American organizations and filed a civil-rights complaint against Harvard University. As the largest joint action taken by Asian-American communities in recent history, the plaintiffs contend that the complaint helped expose Ivy League colleges’ systematic discrimination against Asian American applicants to the national and world stage. The complaint is currently under the investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In addition to continuing the fight for Asian American children's equal education rights, Mr. Zhao also writes columns in Orlando Sentinel, Forbes, The World Journal, Sing Tao Daily and IndiaWest to promote Chinese culture and advance Asian American social progress.
Senior Research Fellow, Center for Equal Opportunity
In D.C. area for over 20 years, Althea Nagai, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Center for Equal Opportunity. She has conducted numerous statistical analyses on racial and ethnic preferences in higher education, including racial and ethnic preferences in undergraduate education at five public universities in Virginia, the University of Michigan, two Arizona universities, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two Ohio universities, and various law and medical schools. In addition, she has written two essays for CEO focusing on Asian Americans, “Too Many Asian Americans,” and “Harvard Investigates Harvard.”
She has also has done work on other statistical studies in the field of social policy. Her first study was a content analysis and critique of the national history standards with John Fonte and Lynne Cheney. She has also conducted studies on marriage, religion, and family structure; on adolescent risk behavior; on philanthropy and social change; and on American elites (American Elites, with Robert Lerner and Stanley Rothman, 1996 Yale University Press).
Board Member, Center for Equal Opportunity
Roger Clegg is a Board Member at and former President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He focuses on legal issues arising from civil rights laws--including the regulatory impact on business and the problems in higher education created by affirmative action. A former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Clegg held the second highest positions in both the Civil Rights Division (1987-91) and in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (1991-93). He has held several other positions at the U.S. Justice Department, including Assistant to the Solicitor General (1985-87), Associate Deputy Attorney General (1984-85), and Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy (1984). Clegg is a graduate of Yale University Law School (1981).
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, Schaerr Jaffe LLP
Gene Schaerr specializes in handling—and usually winning—civil appeals, writ proceedings and similar matters, both in appellate courts and in the law-focused proceedings at the trial-court or agency level that often determine success or failure on appeal. He has argued and won dozens of cases in a variety of forums—including the U.S. Supreme Court (where he has argued six cases), every federal circuit, and numerous federal district courts and state appellate courts. His win rate in the dozens of federal appeals he has argued in the past six years is over 75 percent.
He was a coordinator of Sidley Austin's appellate practice from 1993 until 2005, and from 2005 until 2014 was the chair of the nationwide appellate practice at Winston & Strawn—a practice he led to numerous recognitions in such publications as the Appellate Hot List. His personal practice successes have won him repeated recognition in such publications as Best Lawyers in Washington, D.C., Legal 500, D.C. Superlawyers, and Best Lawyers in America. In January 2014, Mr. Schaerr formed his own boutique litigation firm so that he could serve his clients without the conflicts and inefficiencies inherent in big-firm law practice.
Substantively, Mr. Schaerr's experience includes not only virtually every area of federal law, defamation, higher education law, immigration, insurance coverage, labor and employment, patent and trademark, privacy, product liability and warranty, statutory interpretation and tax.He has represented clients in virtually every sector, including automotive, communications, energy, financial services, health care, higher education, insurance, maritime, pharmaceuticals, technology and state and local government. He also teaches courses in Supreme Court litigation, religious freedom litigation and advanced litigation skills as an adjunct professor of law at the Brigham Young University law school.
Mr. Schaerr began law practice in 1987 following clerkships on the U.S. Supreme Court (for Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Antonin Scalia) and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (for then- Judge Kenneth Starr). He graduated in 1985 from the Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal on Regulation and Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal. From 1991 to 1993, he served in the White House as Associate Counsel to the President, where he had responsibility for a wide range of constitutional and administrative-law issues, including those involving economic regulation, higher education, separation of powers, federalism and religious freedom. He serves as Chairman of the Constitutional Sources Project, a digital resource providing free public access to historical materials relevant to the U.S. Constitution.
Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights, University of North Carolina School of Law
Theodore M. Shaw is the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill. Professor Shaw teaches Civil Procedure and Advanced Constitutional Law/Fourteenth Amendment. Before joining the faculty of UNC Law School, from 2008-2014 Professor Shaw taught at Columbia University Law School, where he was Professor of Professional Practice. During that time he was also “Of Counsel” to the law firm of Norton Rose Fulbright (formerly Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP). His practice involved civil litigation and representation of institutional clients on matters concerning diversity and civil rights.
Professor Shaw was the fifth Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., for which he worked in various capacities over the span of twenty-six years. He has litigated education, employment, voting rights, housing, police misconduct, capital punishment and other civil rights cases in trial and appellate courts, and in the United States Supreme Court.From 1982 until 1987, he litigated education, housing, and capital punishment cases and directed LDF's education litigation docket. In 1987, under the direction of LDF's third Director-Counsel, Julius Chambers, Mr. Shaw relocated to Los Angeles to establish LDF's Western Regional Office. In 1990, Mr. Shaw left LDF to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, where he taught Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Civil Rights. While at Michigan, he played a key role in initiating a review of the law school's admissions practices and policies, and served on the faculty committee that promulgated the admissions program that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger.
In 1993, Mr. Shaw returned to LDF as Associate Director-Counsel, and in 2004, he became LDF's fifth Director-Counsel. Mr. Shaw's legal career began as a Trial Attorney in the Honors Program of the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., where he worked from 1979 until 1982.
Mr. Shaw has testified on numerous occasions before Congress and before state and local legislatures. His human rights work has taken him to Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. In addition to teaching at Columbia and at Michigan Law School, Professor Shaw held the 1997-1998 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law at Queens College and the 2003 Phyllis Beck Chair at Temple Law School. He was a visiting scholar at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia in 2008-2009. He is a member of the faculty of the Practicing Law Institute (PLI).
Mr. Shaw served on the Obama Transition Team after the 2008 presidential election, as team leader for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity
Linda Chavez is Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity. She has published opinions and columns in newspapers across the country and appears regularly on cable news. Chavez is the author of the three books: Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation, An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal, and Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics. She has been honored by the Library of Congress as a "Living Legend" and as nominee for Secretary of Labor by President George W. Bush.
Chavez has held many appointed positions and has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. Among her appointed positions has been Chairman, National Commission on Migrant Education (1988-1992); White House Director of Public Liaison (1985); Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1983-1985); and member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (1984-1986). Chavez was also the Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Maryland in 1986 and was elected by the United Nations' Human Rights Commission to serve a four-year term as U.S. Expert to the U.N. Sub-commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.
Chavez earned her BA from the University of Colorado.
Senior Fellow, Center for Equal Opportunity
Eastland is an accomplished journalist who was editor of The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., before working in the Reagan administration as a speechwriter for Attorney General William French Smith and as director of public affairs for Attorney General Edwin Meese.
Eastland was later a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the editor of Forbes MediaCritic. In 2001, he became publisher of The Weekly Standard and, in 2013, an executive editor. He is now a contributing editor at the magazine. Eastland has published seven books, including two on race preferences, Counting by Race (1979) and Ending Affirmative Action (1996). "The Center has done exceptional work on matters involving race and ethnicity," said Eastland, "and I look forward to contributing to its efforts in behalf of equal protection under the law."
CEO president and general counsel Roger Clegg recalled his work with Eastland during their days together in the Reagan Justice Department: "Terry is an expert on the media, a skilled editor, and a brilliant writer." CEO chairman and founder Linda Chavez said, "Eastland's writing on affirmative action has been among the most incisive and compelling on the issue over the years and will add depth to CEO's work in this arena."
Senior Research Fellow, Center for Equal Opportunity
In D.C. area for over 20 years, Althea Nagai, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Center for Equal Opportunity. She has conducted numerous statistical analyses on racial and ethnic preferences in higher education, including racial and ethnic preferences in undergraduate education at five public universities in Virginia, the University of Michigan, two Arizona universities, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two Ohio universities, and various law and medical schools. In addition, she has written two essays for CEO focusing on Asian Americans, “Too Many Asian Americans,” and “Harvard Investigates Harvard.”
She has also has done work on other statistical studies in the field of social policy. Her first study was a content analysis and critique of the national history standards with John Fonte and Lynne Cheney. She has also conducted studies on marriage, religion, and family structure; on adolescent risk behavior; on philanthropy and social change; and on American elites (American Elites, with Robert Lerner and Stanley Rothman, 1996 Yale University Press).
Director, Educational Opportunities Project, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Brenda Shum is Director of the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under law where she oversees complex litigation, public policy advocacy, and programs designed to ensure educational equity for all students and to eliminate discriminatory practices in schools. sHer practice focuses on the enforcement of civil rights in both K-12 and higher education systems. She is part of the legal team representing underrepresented minority students and applicants defending race conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. She was one of the lead counsel in successful litigation which challenged Maryland's failure to desegregate its discriminatory system of higher education, and she served as part of the legal team that settled a lawsuit against the Louisiana State Department of Education which challenged the state's failure to address disability discrimination in New Orleans charter schools. As Director of the Educational Opportunities Project, Brenda works to ensure that federal and state policy protects our most vulnerable students, including students of color, students with disabilities, low-income students, and English Language Learners. Brenda serves on the steering committee for the National Coalition for School Diversity, the Education Civil Rights Alliance, and the Dignity in Schools Campaign. She also oversees the Parental Readiness and Empowerment Program, an initiative designed to support parents and families in becoming more effective advocates for their children, and Let Us Learn, an initiative that protects the right of all students to enroll in public school regardless of immigration status.
Freelance Journalist and Author
Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.
Taylor has coauthored three books. All have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor authored The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson authored Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.
Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, guilt-presuming campus rape processes, journalistic bias, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, civil liberties, national security, torture, campaign finance, education, impeachment, and other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's best legal journalists and is known for challenging both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.
Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court. He wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Daily News and longer commentaries for RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the (late) Weekly Standard, National Review, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Time and other magazines. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.
Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1977-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.
Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
President, Asian American Coalition for Education
Mr. Yukong Zhao is a distinguished Chinese American civil-rights activist, the President of the Asian American Coalition for Education, and the author of the book, The Chinese Secrets For Success: Five Inspiring Confucian Values.
In May 2015 Mr. Zhao and other Asian American leaders united 64 Asian American organizations and filed a civil-rights complaint against Harvard University. As the largest joint action taken by Asian-American communities in recent history, the plaintiffs contend that the complaint helped expose Ivy League colleges’ systematic discrimination against Asian American applicants to the national and world stage. The complaint is currently under the investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In addition to continuing the fight for Asian American children's equal education rights, Mr. Zhao also writes columns in Orlando Sentinel, Forbes, The World Journal, Sing Tao Daily and IndiaWest to promote Chinese culture and advance Asian American social progress.
Board Member, Center for Equal Opportunity
Roger Clegg is a Board Member at and former President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He focuses on legal issues arising from civil rights laws--including the regulatory impact on business and the problems in higher education created by affirmative action. A former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Clegg held the second highest positions in both the Civil Rights Division (1987-91) and in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (1991-93). He has held several other positions at the U.S. Justice Department, including Assistant to the Solicitor General (1985-87), Associate Deputy Attorney General (1984-85), and Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy (1984). Clegg is a graduate of Yale University Law School (1981).
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, Schaerr Jaffe LLP
Gene Schaerr specializes in handling—and usually winning—civil appeals, writ proceedings and similar matters, both in appellate courts and in the law-focused proceedings at the trial-court or agency level that often determine success or failure on appeal. He has argued and won dozens of cases in a variety of forums—including the U.S. Supreme Court (where he has argued six cases), every federal circuit, and numerous federal district courts and state appellate courts. His win rate in the dozens of federal appeals he has argued in the past six years is over 75 percent.
He was a coordinator of Sidley Austin's appellate practice from 1993 until 2005, and from 2005 until 2014 was the chair of the nationwide appellate practice at Winston & Strawn—a practice he led to numerous recognitions in such publications as the Appellate Hot List. His personal practice successes have won him repeated recognition in such publications as Best Lawyers in Washington, D.C., Legal 500, D.C. Superlawyers, and Best Lawyers in America. In January 2014, Mr. Schaerr formed his own boutique litigation firm so that he could serve his clients without the conflicts and inefficiencies inherent in big-firm law practice.
Substantively, Mr. Schaerr's experience includes not only virtually every area of federal law, defamation, higher education law, immigration, insurance coverage, labor and employment, patent and trademark, privacy, product liability and warranty, statutory interpretation and tax.He has represented clients in virtually every sector, including automotive, communications, energy, financial services, health care, higher education, insurance, maritime, pharmaceuticals, technology and state and local government. He also teaches courses in Supreme Court litigation, religious freedom litigation and advanced litigation skills as an adjunct professor of law at the Brigham Young University law school.
Mr. Schaerr began law practice in 1987 following clerkships on the U.S. Supreme Court (for Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Antonin Scalia) and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (for then- Judge Kenneth Starr). He graduated in 1985 from the Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal on Regulation and Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal. From 1991 to 1993, he served in the White House as Associate Counsel to the President, where he had responsibility for a wide range of constitutional and administrative-law issues, including those involving economic regulation, higher education, separation of powers, federalism and religious freedom. He serves as Chairman of the Constitutional Sources Project, a digital resource providing free public access to historical materials relevant to the U.S. Constitution.
Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights, University of North Carolina School of Law
Theodore M. Shaw is the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill. Professor Shaw teaches Civil Procedure and Advanced Constitutional Law/Fourteenth Amendment. Before joining the faculty of UNC Law School, from 2008-2014 Professor Shaw taught at Columbia University Law School, where he was Professor of Professional Practice. During that time he was also “Of Counsel” to the law firm of Norton Rose Fulbright (formerly Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP). His practice involved civil litigation and representation of institutional clients on matters concerning diversity and civil rights.
Professor Shaw was the fifth Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., for which he worked in various capacities over the span of twenty-six years. He has litigated education, employment, voting rights, housing, police misconduct, capital punishment and other civil rights cases in trial and appellate courts, and in the United States Supreme Court.From 1982 until 1987, he litigated education, housing, and capital punishment cases and directed LDF's education litigation docket. In 1987, under the direction of LDF's third Director-Counsel, Julius Chambers, Mr. Shaw relocated to Los Angeles to establish LDF's Western Regional Office. In 1990, Mr. Shaw left LDF to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, where he taught Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Civil Rights. While at Michigan, he played a key role in initiating a review of the law school's admissions practices and policies, and served on the faculty committee that promulgated the admissions program that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger.
In 1993, Mr. Shaw returned to LDF as Associate Director-Counsel, and in 2004, he became LDF's fifth Director-Counsel. Mr. Shaw's legal career began as a Trial Attorney in the Honors Program of the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., where he worked from 1979 until 1982.
Mr. Shaw has testified on numerous occasions before Congress and before state and local legislatures. His human rights work has taken him to Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. In addition to teaching at Columbia and at Michigan Law School, Professor Shaw held the 1997-1998 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law at Queens College and the 2003 Phyllis Beck Chair at Temple Law School. He was a visiting scholar at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia in 2008-2009. He is a member of the faculty of the Practicing Law Institute (PLI).
Mr. Shaw served on the Obama Transition Team after the 2008 presidential election, as team leader for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
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