President, Fraternal Order of Police
Chuck Canterbury began serving as President of the Fraternal Order of Police in January 2003 after the death of President Steve Young. He has been reelected seven times.
President Canterbury joined the Fraternal Order of Police in 1984 when he, along with eleven other officers, chartered their Local Lodge. He served as Local Lodge President for 13 years, during which time he was instrumental in starting the Lodge Legal Defense Plan, purchasing the first lodge building, and starting the Lodge insurance program.
He went on to serve as State Lodge President from 1990 to 1998. During his tenure he was instrumental in establishing the State Lodge lobbying program, initiating the political endorsement program and implementing the State Lodge Legal Defense Plan. He led the effort to hire a full time Executive Director for the State Lodge to manage these programs.
He began his service on the Grand Lodge Executive Board in 1995 when he was elected to the first of three terms as the Second Vice President. In 2001, he was elected Vice President. During this time, he has worked to expand the police labor movement in the areas of our country who do not have collective bargaining rights. Improving the quality of life for police officers has been his foremost goal. During his tenure he has brought a best business practice model to the FOP.
President Canterbury retired in January 2004 from the Horry County Police Department, Conway, South Carolina, where he most recently had oversight of the Operations Bureau. He began his police career in 1978 and over his 26-year career he worked in the Patrol Division, the Criminal Investigations Division and served as the Training Division Supervisor, during which he was certified as an Instructor in basic law enforcement, firearms, chemical weapons, and pursuit driving.
He has been appointed by President George Bush to serve on the Medal of Valor Board and also serves on our Nation's Homeland Security Council. Chuck has also been appointed to the Congressional Badge of Bravery Awards committee. Chuck is also on the Board of Directors of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He also serves as Treasurer of the International Council of Police Representatives Association. This group represents over 1.4 million of our world's law enforcement officers.
He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Coastal Carolina University.
Acting Assistant Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Office of Professional Responsibility, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Brian M. Fish is currently the Senior Advisor to the General Counsel at the Department of Homeland Security where he works on immigration and law enforcement issues. Previously, he was a trial attorney with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he represented the Department of Homeland Security in removal hearings before the U.S. Immigration Court. Additionally, he was a Special Assistant United States Attorney and a Baltimore City homicide prosecutor. He is a member of the Federalist Society's Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group Executive Committee and the President of its Baltimore Lawyers Chapter. He earned his B.A. from LaSalle University in 1992 and his J.D. from Loyola University New Orleans School of Law in 1998.
President, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Vanita Gupta is the President of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. She previously served as the acting Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division and the top civil rights prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice. Before her work at the DOJ she was a civil rights lawyer and the Deputy Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she oversaw the ACLU's national criminal justice reform efforts. She is a graduate of Yale and New York University Law School.
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.
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law
Hon. Kenneth L. Marcus is an internationally recognized expert in civil and human rights, as well as a leader in the fight against anti-Semitism on and off university campuses. He is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the leading civil rights legal organization fighting against anti-Semitism. The New York Times has called him “The Man Who Helped Redefine Campus Anti-Semitism.” He been described, in that paper, as “the single most effective and respected force” to combat anti-Semitism.
During his public service career, Marcus served as Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Civil Rights; Staff Director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; and General Deputy Assistant U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.
In academia, he serves as Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University. He formerly held the Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Chair in Equality and Justice in America at the City University of New York’s Bernard M. Baruch College, served as Visiting Research Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University, and was a Board of Visitors member George Mason University and Distinguished Senior Fellow at that university’s law school. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism and previously served as Associate Editor of the Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism.
Marcus is also author of The Definition of Anti-Semitism (Oxford University Press) and Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America (Cambridge University Press). He has published widely in academic journals as well as in more popular venues such as The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek, USA Today, and Politico. He is a graduate of Williams College and the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.
Earlier in his career, he was a litigation partner in two major law firms, where he conducted complex commercial and constitutional litigation. He also serves as Chairman emeritus of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Civil Rights Practice Group.
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law
Hon. Kenneth L. Marcus is an internationally recognized expert in civil and human rights, as well as a leader in the fight against anti-Semitism on and off university campuses. He is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the leading civil rights legal organization fighting against anti-Semitism. The New York Times has called him “The Man Who Helped Redefine Campus Anti-Semitism.” He been described, in that paper, as “the single most effective and respected force” to combat anti-Semitism.
During his public service career, Marcus served as Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Civil Rights; Staff Director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; and General Deputy Assistant U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.
In academia, he serves as Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University. He formerly held the Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Chair in Equality and Justice in America at the City University of New York’s Bernard M. Baruch College, served as Visiting Research Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University, and was a Board of Visitors member George Mason University and Distinguished Senior Fellow at that university’s law school. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism and previously served as Associate Editor of the Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism.
Marcus is also author of The Definition of Anti-Semitism (Oxford University Press) and Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America (Cambridge University Press). He has published widely in academic journals as well as in more popular venues such as The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek, USA Today, and Politico. He is a graduate of Williams College and the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.
Earlier in his career, he was a litigation partner in two major law firms, where he conducted complex commercial and constitutional litigation. He also serves as Chairman emeritus of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Civil Rights Practice Group.
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.
Vice-chair, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and Adjunct Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Abigail Thernstrom is the vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York from 1993 to 2009, and a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education for more than a decade until her third term ended in November 2006. She also serves on the board of advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. She received her Ph.D. in 1975 from the Department of Government, Harvard University.
In 2007 she and her husband, Stephan Thernstrom, along with James Q. Wilson, Martin Feldstein, and John Bolton, were the recipients of a Bradley Foundation prizes for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement.
Thernstrom and her husband, Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom, are the co-authors of No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (Simon & Schuster, October 2003), which has been awarded the 2007 Fordham Foundation prize for “for distinguished scholarship,” and was named by both the Los Angeles Times and the American School Board Journal as one of the best books of 2003.
They also collaborated on America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (Simon & Schuster), which the New York Times Book Review, in its annual end-of-the-year issue, named as one of the notable books of 1997.
They are the editors of a Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity. Their lengthy review of William G. Bowen and Derek Bok's much-noticed work, The Shape of the River, appeared in the June 1999 issue of the UCLA Law Review.
Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights (Harvard University Press) won four awards, including the American Bar Association's Certificate of Merit, and the Anisfield-Wolf prize for the best book on race and ethnicity. It was named the best policy studies book of that year by the Policy Studies Organization (an affiliate of the American Political Science Association), and won the Benchmark Book Award from the Center for Judicial Studies. Along with her husband, she also won the 2004 Peter Shaw Memorial Award given by National Association of Scholars.
She is currently completing a book entitled Voting Rights and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections, and is working, as well, with her husband on another book with the tentative title of Don’t Call it Segregation: The Myth of Contemporary Apartheid. She (and two co-authors) submitted an amicus brief in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle, challenging the constitutionality of Seattle's racial balancing plan.
Her frequent media appearances have included Fox News Sunday, Good Morning America, and This Week with George Stephanopoulos. For some years, she was a stringer for The Economist, and continues to write for a variety of journals and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the (London) Times Literary Supplement.
She serves on several boards, and from 1992 to 1997 was a member of the Aspen Institute's Domestic Strategy Group.
Associate Dean for Faculty; Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Professor of Constitutional Law, The Ohio State University Mortiz College of Law
Professor Daniel Tokaji is an authority on the law of elections and democracy. He teaches courses on Election Law, Civil Rights, Civil Procedure, Comparative Law, Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, Legislation and Regulation, and the U.S. Legal System. His scholarship addresses questions of voting rights, racial justice, free speech, and the role of the courts in American democracy.
Professor Tokaji is the author of Election Law in a Nutshell (2d ed. 2016), and co-author of Election Law: Cases and Materials (6th ed. 2017) and The New Soft Money (2014). He has written numerous articles and book chapters on a wide variety of election and voting issues, including voting rights, voter ID, voter registration, redistricting, campaign finance regulation. Recent articles include “Gerrymandering and Association,” 59 William & Mary Law Review 2159 (2018), and “Denying Systemic Equality: The Last Words of the Kennedy Court,” 13 Harvard Law & Policy Review 539 (2019). His current research focuses on the challenges facing democracies around the globe, including the free speech issues surrounding digital disinformation and the need for trustworthy electoral institutions.
Media outlets frequently seek Professor Tokaji’s expertise on election and voting issues. He has been quoted in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Columbus Dispatch, USA TODAY, and appeared on TODAY, FOX News, NBC News, and National Public Radio and many other media outlets.
A graduate of Harvard College and the Yale Law School, Professor Tokaji clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Before arriving at Ohio State, he was a staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and Chair of California Common Cause.
Professor Tokaji has litigated many civil rights, civil liberties, and election law cases. He was lead counsel in a case that struck down an Ohio law requiring naturalized citizens to produce a certificate of naturalization when challenged at the polls. He also served as counsel in litigation challenging the state’s voting purges. He was also an attorney for plaintiffs in cases that kept open the window for simultaneous registration and early voting in Ohio’s 2008 general election, and that challenged punch-card voting systems in Ohio and California after the 2000 election.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
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