Will Skillman Fellow in Education, Center for Education Policy, The Heritage Foundation
Jonathan Butcher is the Will Skillman Fellow in Education at The Heritage Foundation. He is the author of Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth (Bombardier Books, April 2022). He co-edited and wrote chapters in The Critical Classroom (The Heritage Foundation, 2022), discussing the racial prejudice that comes from the application of critical race theory in K-12 schools. In 2021, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster nominated Jonathan to serve on the board of the South Carolina Public Charter School District, a statewide charter school authorizer. He has researched and testified on education policy around the U.S.
Jonathan co-edited and wrote chapters in the book The Not-So-Great Society, which provides conservative solutions to the problems created by the ever-expanding federal footprint in preschool, K-12, and higher education.
In 2018 the Federal Commission on School Safety cited comments from his testimony in the commission’s final report. He has appeared on local and national TV outlets, including C-SPAN, Fox News, and HBO’s Vice News Tonight, and he has been a guest on many radio programs. His commentary has appeared nationally in places such as the Wall Street Journal, Education Week, National Review Online, Newsweek.com, and Forbes.com, along with newspapers around the country.
In 2017 he was a co-recipient of the State Policy Network’s Bob Williams Award for Most Influential Research for a proposal to protect free speech on campus, alongside Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Jim Manley of the Goldwater Institute.
Jonathan previously served as the education director at the Goldwater Institute, where he remains a senior fellow. He was a member of the Arizona Department of Education’s first Steering Committee for Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, the nation’s first education savings account program. He is also a Senior Fellow with The Beacon Center of Tennessee, a nonpartisan research organization, and a contributing scholar for the Georgia Center for Opportunity.
Prior to joining Goldwater, Jonathan was the director of accountability for the South Carolina Public Charter School District. Jonathan previously studied education policy at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas and worked with the School Choice Demonstration Project, the research team that evaluated voucher programs in Washington, D.C. and Milwaukee, Wisc.
Jonathan holds a B.A. in English from Furman University and an M.A. in economics from the University of Arkansas.
Co-Founder and President, Defense of Freedom Institute
Bob is a co-founder and President of DFI. He previously served as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Education from 2017 through 2020 and Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Education from 2005 until 2009.
During his most recent tenure at the Department, Bob served on the Secretary’s Leadership Team as a strategic and legal adviser on higher education, civil rights, and congressional oversight matters. As the Department’s Regulatory Reform Officer, he also supervised the implementation of the Secretary’s regulatory agenda and was an architect of the Secretary’s reforms concerning Title IX and the Higher Education Act. As Deputy General Counsel, Bob advised on a wide variety of regulatory, legislative, and oversight matters.
Prior to joining the Department in 2017, Bob was vice president for regulatory compliance matters for several postsecondary institutions and practiced education and employment law in Washington, D.C. Before coming to the Department in 2005, he practiced law in New Orleans, litigating commercial, employment, and bankruptcy cases in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi.
Bob earned his A.B. in History from Georgetown University, studied British government and international politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and received his law degree from Tulane University Law School. His articles have been published by National Review, Real Clear Education, Washington Examiner, and other media outlets. Fox News has featured his work.
Bob is a member of the District of Columbia and Louisiana Bars and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, executive editor of Education Next, editor in chief of the Education Gadfly Weekly, host of the Education Gadfly Show podcast, and a contributor at Forbes.com. An award-winning writer, he is the author of The Diverse Schools Dilemma, editor of Education for Upward Mobility, and co-editor of How to Educate an American and Follow the Science to School. An expert on charter schools, school accountability, evidence-based practices, and trends in test scores and other student outcomes, Petrilli has published opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Slate, and appears frequently on television and radio. Petrilli helped to create the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement and the Policy Innovators in Education Network, and serves on the board of the Association of American Educators Foundation. He lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland.
Director of Research, National Association of Scholars
David Randall is director of research at the National Association of Scholars (NAS). He has co-authored The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science: Causes, Consequences, and the Road to Reform (2018), as well as articles on the irreproducibility crisis for The Wall Street Journal and The Hill. He has also written reports for the NAS on civics education, social justice education, college common readings, and the College Board’s Advanced Placement European History examination. His academic works include The Concept of Conversation: From Cicero’s Sermo to the Grand Siècle’s Conversation (2018) and The Conversational Enlightenment: The Reconception of Rhetoric in Eighteenth-Century Thought (2019).
David earned a Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University, an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Columbia University, a master’s degree in library science from the Palmer School at Long Island University, and a B.A. from Swarthmore College. Prior to working at NAS he was the sole librarian at the John McEnroe Library at New York Studio School, where he secured a number of grants for the school’s Lecture Series Archive Digitization Project.
Investigative Counsel, U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce
Kent Talbert is a Washington, DC-based attorney with over 25 years’ experience in providing advice on education law and policy in Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, and the private sector. His practice includes legal and policy advice to colleges and universities, for-profit schools, accrediting agencies, the pre-K-12 sector, charter school organizations, trade associations, and education-focused companies, as well as service as an expert witness. He currently serves as Investigative Counsel, U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Prior to establishing his firm, Mr. Talbert practiced at Talbert & Eitel, PLLC from 2010-2012. From 2006-2009 he served as General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Education, advising the Secretary of Education on a broad range of legal and policy matters, including the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, the drafting and implementation of regulations under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and major education law cases pending before the Supreme Court of the United States and other appellate and trial courts. During his tenure as General Counsel, Mr. Talbert served as the Chief Regulatory Officer for the Department, overseeing all documents for publication in the Federal Register.
He has provided legal and strategic advice on the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act of 2008, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans With Disabilities Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act ("Clery Act"), Federal Student Aid program reviews, negotiated rulemaking, and accreditation.
Prior to his service as General Counsel, Mr. Talbert served as the Department's Deputy General Counsel for Departmental and Legislative Service from 2001-2006. Earlier in his career, Mr. Talbert served for over 12 years on House and Senate staff, both as Education Policy Counsel for the Committee on Education and the Workforce in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as a professional staff member of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources (now Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) in the U.S. Senate.
Mr. Talbert is a member of the Bars of the District of Columbia and South Carolina, the Alliance of Public Charter School Attorneys, and the National Association of College and University Attorneys where he serves on the Committee on Legal Education. He is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Federal Claims, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and all federal courts in South Carolina and Washington, DC.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, The George Washington University Law School
Aram A. Gavoor is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and an internationally recognized scholar in American administrative law, national security, and federal courts. His co-authored work was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Department of Commerce v. New York (2019). His scholarship has earned placement in the Florida Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, Ohio State Law Journal, and other law journals. He has briefed and argued over a dozen high-profile public law cases before a majority of the U.S. Courts of Appeals and numerous cases before almost a third of the 94 U.S. District Courts. Associate Dean Gavoor frequently shares his national security, artificial intelligence policy, and federal courts expertise with international news media, including CNN, BBC World News, Wall Street Journal, NBC News, and ABC (Australia) World News. In 2021, the National Law Journal named Associate Dean Gavoor a Rising Star (top 40 under 40) honoree.
Earlier in his career, Associate Dean Gavoor served as Senior Counsel for National Security in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, as third-in-rank Counselor to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the White House Office of Management and Budget, and in private practice. He received the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service in 2019, the Civil Division Special Commendation Award in 2020, 2019, and 2018, and a Commendation from the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section of the Criminal Division in 2018.
Associate Dean Gavoor previously served on the law school’s part-time faculty from 2008-2017 before accepting a term-limited position as Visiting Associate Professor from 2017-2019. He received GW Law’s Distinguished Adjunct Faculty Teaching Award from the 2020 and 2017 graduating classes. He currently teaches Constitutional Law II, Administrative Law, National Security Law, and Federal Courts.
Vice President and Legal Director, MacArthur Justice Center
Johnathan Smith as the inaugural Vice President and Legal Director of the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center. Smith has extensive leadership experience in the legal advocacy sector and both federal and state government agencies. Most recently, he served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General and acting Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he helped oversee the Division’s investigatory, enforcement, and policy efforts. Smith previously served in the New York State government as the Governor’s deputy secretary for civil rights and workforce and as the interim commissioner for the New York State Division of Human Rights. He has also worked as the legal director at Muslim Advocates, a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and a litigation associate at Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson LLP. Additionally, Smith served as a lecturer at the University of Michigan Law School. He received his JD from New York University School of Law, and his Masters in Education and Bachelors in Arts from Harvard University.
Senior Fellow, R Street Institute
Prior to R Street, Adam spent 12 years as a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Before the Mercatus Center, he served as the president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Adam has also worked for the Adam Smith Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.
Adam has published 10 books on a wide range of topics, including online child safety, internet governance, intellectual property, telecommunications policy, media regulation and federalism.
In 2008, Adam received the Family Online Safety Institute’s “Award for Outstanding Achievement.”
Deputy Secretary of Labor, U.S. Department of Labor
Keith E. Sonderling was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 12, 2025 to be the 38th United States Deputy Secretary of Labor.
As the United States Deputy Secretary of Labor, Sonderling is the second-highest-ranking official and serves as the Department's Chief Operating Officer, overseeing the agency’s $14 billion dollar budget and 16,000 employees. The Deputy Secretary oversees key operational functions such as: strategic planning; budget formulation; financial management; information technology; and human resource management. Additionally, the Deputy Secretary provides the leadership and management of DOL’s agencies necessary to support the Secretary and the Department’s mission.
Prior to becoming Deputy Secretary, he was previously confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as the Commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) from September 2020 until August 2024. He also served as the Commission’s Vice-Chair from 2020-2021.
During his tenure at the EEOC, one of Sonderling’s highest priorities was ensuring that artificial intelligence and workplace technologies are designed and deployed consistent with long-standing laws. He published numerous articles on the benefits and potential harms of using artificial intelligence-based technology in the workplace and spoke globally on artificial intelligence’s impact on the workplace.
Sonderling previously served at the US Department of Labor as the Acting and Deputy Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division from 2017-2020. During his tenure, the Division accomplished back-to-back record-breaking enforcement collections and educational outreach events. Sonderling also oversaw the development and publication of large-scale deregulatory rules and authored numerous Opinion Letters, Field Assistance Bulletins, and All Agency Memorandums. Additionally, he was instrumental in developing the Division’s first comprehensive self-audit program, which collected more than $7 million for nearly eleven thousand workers.
Before his government service, Sonderling was a partner at one of Florida’s oldest and largest law firms, Gunster. At Gunster, he counseled employers and litigated labor and employment disputes. In 2012, then-Governor Rick Scott appointed Sonderling to serve as the Chair of the Judicial Nominating Committee for appellate courts in South Florida. Sonderling was also active in the community, serving on the Board of Directors for Morse Life Health System, the Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce, and Leadership Florida.
Sonderling also serves as a Professional Lecturer in the Law (Adjunct Professor) at George Washington University Law School, teaching employment discrimination.
Sonderling received his B.S., magna cum laude, from the University of Florida and his J.D., magna cum laude, from Nova Southeastern University.
Will Skillman Fellow in Education, Center for Education Policy, The Heritage Foundation
Jonathan Butcher is the Will Skillman Fellow in Education at The Heritage Foundation. He is the author of Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth (Bombardier Books, April 2022). He co-edited and wrote chapters in The Critical Classroom (The Heritage Foundation, 2022), discussing the racial prejudice that comes from the application of critical race theory in K-12 schools. In 2021, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster nominated Jonathan to serve on the board of the South Carolina Public Charter School District, a statewide charter school authorizer. He has researched and testified on education policy around the U.S.
Jonathan co-edited and wrote chapters in the book The Not-So-Great Society, which provides conservative solutions to the problems created by the ever-expanding federal footprint in preschool, K-12, and higher education.
In 2018 the Federal Commission on School Safety cited comments from his testimony in the commission’s final report. He has appeared on local and national TV outlets, including C-SPAN, Fox News, and HBO’s Vice News Tonight, and he has been a guest on many radio programs. His commentary has appeared nationally in places such as the Wall Street Journal, Education Week, National Review Online, Newsweek.com, and Forbes.com, along with newspapers around the country.
In 2017 he was a co-recipient of the State Policy Network’s Bob Williams Award for Most Influential Research for a proposal to protect free speech on campus, alongside Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Jim Manley of the Goldwater Institute.
Jonathan previously served as the education director at the Goldwater Institute, where he remains a senior fellow. He was a member of the Arizona Department of Education’s first Steering Committee for Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, the nation’s first education savings account program. He is also a Senior Fellow with The Beacon Center of Tennessee, a nonpartisan research organization, and a contributing scholar for the Georgia Center for Opportunity.
Prior to joining Goldwater, Jonathan was the director of accountability for the South Carolina Public Charter School District. Jonathan previously studied education policy at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas and worked with the School Choice Demonstration Project, the research team that evaluated voucher programs in Washington, D.C. and Milwaukee, Wisc.
Jonathan holds a B.A. in English from Furman University and an M.A. in economics from the University of Arkansas.
Co-Founder and President, Defense of Freedom Institute
Bob is a co-founder and President of DFI. He previously served as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Education from 2017 through 2020 and Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Education from 2005 until 2009.
During his most recent tenure at the Department, Bob served on the Secretary’s Leadership Team as a strategic and legal adviser on higher education, civil rights, and congressional oversight matters. As the Department’s Regulatory Reform Officer, he also supervised the implementation of the Secretary’s regulatory agenda and was an architect of the Secretary’s reforms concerning Title IX and the Higher Education Act. As Deputy General Counsel, Bob advised on a wide variety of regulatory, legislative, and oversight matters.
Prior to joining the Department in 2017, Bob was vice president for regulatory compliance matters for several postsecondary institutions and practiced education and employment law in Washington, D.C. Before coming to the Department in 2005, he practiced law in New Orleans, litigating commercial, employment, and bankruptcy cases in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi.
Bob earned his A.B. in History from Georgetown University, studied British government and international politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and received his law degree from Tulane University Law School. His articles have been published by National Review, Real Clear Education, Washington Examiner, and other media outlets. Fox News has featured his work.
Bob is a member of the District of Columbia and Louisiana Bars and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, executive editor of Education Next, editor in chief of the Education Gadfly Weekly, host of the Education Gadfly Show podcast, and a contributor at Forbes.com. An award-winning writer, he is the author of The Diverse Schools Dilemma, editor of Education for Upward Mobility, and co-editor of How to Educate an American and Follow the Science to School. An expert on charter schools, school accountability, evidence-based practices, and trends in test scores and other student outcomes, Petrilli has published opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Slate, and appears frequently on television and radio. Petrilli helped to create the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement and the Policy Innovators in Education Network, and serves on the board of the Association of American Educators Foundation. He lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland.
Director of Research, National Association of Scholars
David Randall is director of research at the National Association of Scholars (NAS). He has co-authored The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science: Causes, Consequences, and the Road to Reform (2018), as well as articles on the irreproducibility crisis for The Wall Street Journal and The Hill. He has also written reports for the NAS on civics education, social justice education, college common readings, and the College Board’s Advanced Placement European History examination. His academic works include The Concept of Conversation: From Cicero’s Sermo to the Grand Siècle’s Conversation (2018) and The Conversational Enlightenment: The Reconception of Rhetoric in Eighteenth-Century Thought (2019).
David earned a Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University, an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Columbia University, a master’s degree in library science from the Palmer School at Long Island University, and a B.A. from Swarthmore College. Prior to working at NAS he was the sole librarian at the John McEnroe Library at New York Studio School, where he secured a number of grants for the school’s Lecture Series Archive Digitization Project.
Investigative Counsel, U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce
Kent Talbert is a Washington, DC-based attorney with over 25 years’ experience in providing advice on education law and policy in Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, and the private sector. His practice includes legal and policy advice to colleges and universities, for-profit schools, accrediting agencies, the pre-K-12 sector, charter school organizations, trade associations, and education-focused companies, as well as service as an expert witness. He currently serves as Investigative Counsel, U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Prior to establishing his firm, Mr. Talbert practiced at Talbert & Eitel, PLLC from 2010-2012. From 2006-2009 he served as General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Education, advising the Secretary of Education on a broad range of legal and policy matters, including the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, the drafting and implementation of regulations under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and major education law cases pending before the Supreme Court of the United States and other appellate and trial courts. During his tenure as General Counsel, Mr. Talbert served as the Chief Regulatory Officer for the Department, overseeing all documents for publication in the Federal Register.
He has provided legal and strategic advice on the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act of 2008, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans With Disabilities Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act ("Clery Act"), Federal Student Aid program reviews, negotiated rulemaking, and accreditation.
Prior to his service as General Counsel, Mr. Talbert served as the Department's Deputy General Counsel for Departmental and Legislative Service from 2001-2006. Earlier in his career, Mr. Talbert served for over 12 years on House and Senate staff, both as Education Policy Counsel for the Committee on Education and the Workforce in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as a professional staff member of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources (now Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) in the U.S. Senate.
Mr. Talbert is a member of the Bars of the District of Columbia and South Carolina, the Alliance of Public Charter School Attorneys, and the National Association of College and University Attorneys where he serves on the Committee on Legal Education. He is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Federal Claims, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and all federal courts in South Carolina and Washington, DC.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
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