University

David D. Cole

Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy, Georgetown Law

Biography

David Cole is the Honorable George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy and former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He writes about and teaches constitutional law, freedom of speech, and constitutional criminal procedure. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and is the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation.

David has published widely in law journals and the popular press, including The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Stanford Law Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. He is the author or editor of ten books, several of which have won awards. Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror, published in 2007, and co-authored with Jules Lobel, won the Palmer Civil Liberties Prize for best book on national security and civil liberties. Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism received the American Book Award in 2004. No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review and best book on an issue of national policy in1999 by the American Political Science Association.

David received his bachelor’s degree and law degree from Yale University. He worked as a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights from 1985 to 1990. He has continued to litigate as a professor and, from 2017 to 2024, as National Legal Director of the ACLU. He has litigated many significant constitutional cases at the Supreme Court, including Texas v. Johnson (1989), which extended First Amendment protection to flag burning; Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which held that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are prohibited forms of sex discrimination under Title VII; Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist. v. B.L. (2021), which protected student online speech from school discipline; and National Rifle Association v. Vullo (2024), which held that government officials violate the First Amendment when they use their regulatory authority to coerce private parties to blacklist a disfavored political group.

David has received two honorary degrees and numerous awards for his work, including the inaugural Norman Dorsen Presidential Prize from the ACLU for lifetime commitment to civil liberties. The late New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis called David “one of the country’s great legal voices for civil liberties today.” Nat Hentoff called him “a one-man Committee of Correspondence in the tradition of patriot Sam Adams.”

Ilya Shapiro

Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute

Biography

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.

Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.

Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.

Liam Collins

Executive Director, Viola Foundation

Biography

Dr. Liam Collins is the executive director of the Viola Foundation, the executive director of the Madison Policy Forum, a senior fellow with New America, and a permanent member with the Council on Foreign Relations. He is author of the Leadership & Innovation During Crisis: Lessons from the Iraq War (West Point Press 2024), co-author of Understanding Urban Warfare (Howgate 2023), and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of U.S. Counterterrorism and Irregular Warfare Operations (Routledge 2022).

Liam served in the U.S. Army for 27 years. As a career Special Forces officer, he conducted multiple operational and combat deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, South America, and the Horn of Africa. Liam retired from the military in 2019 as the founding director of the Modern War Institute and as the director of the Department of Military Instruction at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

From 2016-2018, Liam served as the executive officer to the U.S. Senior Defense Advisor to Ukraine. In that position he met with hundreds of Ukrainian officials to include their president, minister of defense, and chief of defense to help them reform their defense establishment. Within the United States he met with numerous officials including the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of Defense, senior Department of State Officials, and the House Armed Services Committee to help shape U.S. policy.

Liam also served as the director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point and is the author of dozens of articles and reports related to terrorism and conflict. Liam’s work has been cited by the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security & Counterterrorism, the White House Press Secretary, The New York Times, Associated Press, CNN, ABC News, Fox News, NPR, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

An expert on the military, defense, and security, Liam routinely provides expert commentary for BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, NPR, Deutsche Welle News TV, India Today, RFE/RL, among others.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering (Aerospace) from the United States Military Academy, and a Master’s in Public Affairs and a PhD from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.

An accomplished athlete and coach, he has competed as an athlete and coached teams in different sports at multiple world championships. He won the Army’s Best Ranger Competition in 2007 and was selected as the Army’s Coach of the Year in 2011. He also has two multi-million dollar winning thoroughbred racehorses named after him.

His military awards and decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, three Bronze Star Medals with “V” devices for valor, Special Forces Tab, Ranger Tab, Sapper Tab, Master Parachutist Badge, and Military Free Fall Badge with Bronze Star (for combat jump).