Greta Anderson is a reporter for Inside Higher Ed who covers student affairs, including campus free expression and civic engagement issues. She has written numerous stories about student activism and politics, get out the vote efforts and attempted suppression of student votes. Greta’s work has been republished by other news outlets and frequently cited by organizations that defend free speech.

Greta is a DC area native and has worked at Inside Higher Ed since graduating from Temple University in 2019. At Temple, Greta studied journalism and Spanish and was news editor for The Temple News, the university’s student-run newspaper. She was also a contributor to AL DIA News, a bilingual magazine in Philadelphia that covers the city’s Latino community.

Aidan Arasasingham is the President of the UC Student Association, the official voice of the over 285,000 UC students at the university, state, and federal levels. He is especially focused on advancing pro-student affordability, accessibility, and equity policies that support UC’s most marginalized student populations. He also serves and has served on the boards of the Associated Students UCLA (ASUCLA), Westside Young Democrats Club, and the Irvine Unified School District (IUSD). He is a life-long Californian, and a senior at UCLA majoring in Global Studies with minors in Urban & Regional Studies and Art History.

Erwin Chemerinsky became the 13th Dean of Berkeley Law on July 1, 2017, when he joined the faculty as the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law.

Prior to assuming this position, from 2008-2017, he was the founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, at University of California, Irvine School of Law, with a joint appointment in Political Science. Before that he was the Alston and Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University from 2004-2008, and from 1983-2004 was a professor at the University of Southern California Law School, including as the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, and Political Science. He also has taught at DePaul College of Law and UCLA Law School. He teaches Constitutional Law, First Amendment Law, Federal Courts, Criminal Procedure, and Appellate Litigation.

He is the author of ten books, including The Case Against the Supreme Court, published by Viking in 2014, and two books published by Yale University Press in 2017, Closing the Courthouse Doors: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable and Free Speech on Campus (with Howard Gillman). He also is the author of more than 200 law review articles. He writes a weekly column for the Sacramento Bee, monthly columns for the ABA Journal and the Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court.

In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In January 2017, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States.

Education
B.S., Northwestern University (1975)
J.D., Harvard Law School (1978)

Michelle N. Deutchman is the inaugural Executive Director of the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. Formed by the UC Office of the President, the Center explores how the fundamental democratic and academic principles of free speech and civic engagement should enrich the discovery and transmission of knowledge in America’s colleges and universities. In this role, Deutchman oversees a multidisciplinary national fellowship program and works across all 10 UC campuses to study and shape national discourse about free speech.

Before joining the Center, Deutchman served as Western States Civil Rights Counsel and National Campus Counsel for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a non-profit organization that has been a leader in combating bigotry, prejudice and anti-Semitism for over a century. As National Campus Counsel, Ms. Deutchman focused on emerging trends and challenges pertaining to free expression at colleges and universities. She trained campus stakeholders – including administrators and law enforcement – on how to safeguard free speech at universities while simultaneously maintaining a safe and inclusive campus climate.

Deutchman teaches a course on contemporary free exercise issues at UCLA School of Law.

She earned her Juris Doctor from University of Southern California Law Center, where she graduated Order of the Coif. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of University of California at Berkeley and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science.

Renée DiResta is the Technical Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She investigates the spread of malign narratives across social and other media networks. Renee’s areas of research include disinformation and propaganda by state-sponsored actors, and health misinformation and conspiracy theories. Renee has advised Congress, the State Department, and other academic, civic, and business organizations, and has studied disinformation and computational propaganda in the context of pseudoscience conspiracies, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare.

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Jennifer Domagal-Goldman is the executive director of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge at Civic Nation.

Prior to joining the Challenge, Domagal-Goldman directed the American Democracy Project, a national civic learning and democratic engagement network of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU).

Domagal-Goldman serves on the editorial board of the eJournal of Public Affairs. She has contributed to a number of civic engagement publications, including co-authoring chapters in Reimagining Democratic Societies: A New Era of Personal and Social Responsibility (2013), Becoming a Steward of Place: Four Areas of Institutional Focus (2014), and Student Civic Outcomes in Service Learning: Conceptual Frameworks and Methods (2017). She also contributed to Higher Education’s Role in Enacting a Thriving Democracy: Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Theory of Change (2018).

Domagal-Goldman earned her PhD in higher education from Penn State. She received her MA in higher education and student affairs administration from the University of Vermont and her bachelor’s degree from the University of Rochester.

In August 2020, Michael V. Drake, M.D. became the 21st president of UC’s world-renowned system of 10 campuses, five medical centers, three nationally affiliated labs, more than 280,000 students and 230,000 faculty and staff.

Dr. Drake previously served as president of The Ohio State University (OSU) from 2014 through June 2020. Prior to his six years at OSU, his entire academic career has been at UC, including as chancellor of UC Irvine for nine years from 2005 to 2014 and as the systemwide vice president for health affairs from 2000 to 2005.

Drake received his A.B. from Stanford University and his residency, M.D., and fellowship in ophthalmology from UCSF. He subsequently spent more than two decades on the faculty of the UCSF School of Medicine, including as the Steven P. Shearing Professor of Ophthalmology.

Under his leadership, Drake greatly enhanced UC Irvine’s reputation as a premier university. UC Irvine rose to join the top 10 public universities in U.S. News & World Report’s annual list and was ranked by Times Higher Education as the No. 1 university in the U.S. under 50 years old. During his tenure at the campus, the four-year graduation rate increased by more than 18 percent, while undergraduate enrollment and diversity significantly increased. In addition, Drake oversaw the establishment of new schools of law and education as well as programs in public health, nursing and pharmacy.

Drake has published numerous articles and co-authored six books. He served as a reviewer for several medical journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association, Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science and the American Journal of Ophthalmology. Drake is a member of several national scientific and scholarly societies, and has received various awards for teaching, public service, mentoring and research. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the UCSF School of Medicine’s Clinical Teaching Award, the Hogan Award for Laboratory Research, the Chancellor’s Award for Public Service, the Martin Luther King Jr. Award for University Service, the UC Irvine Medal, and the University of California Presidential Medal in recognition of his exemplary service to the University.

Drake’s extensive public service experience includes various roles for the American Medical Association, the National Eye Institute, the Association of American Medical Colleges, and multiple commissions on health in the state of California. He is a former chair of the board of directors of the Association of American Universities and currently serves as a member of the board of directors for the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. He is also the chair of the board of governors of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, a member of the American Talent Initiative Steering Committee, and a member of the board of directors of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Katya Ehresman is a senior at the University of Texas at Austin. Katya is the current chair of the Student Advisory Board at the Campus Vote Project where she founded and leads the Student Voting Network - a national, nonpartisan platform led by students, for students to collaborate on democracy engagement initiatives and youth voting rights projects on and around their campuses. In less than a year of starting the Student Voting Network, the group has grown to nearly 800 students from across the country. Katya's work through the Student Voting Network and with the Campus Vote Project has primarily focused on voter registration and turnout coordination and connecting students to share best practices and digital engagement opportunities leading up to the 2020 election(s)! Now, she is using the Student Voting Network to recapture the momentum of young voters and voices around the election and emphasize student leadership in legislative organizing for youth voting rights both statewide and federally.

At the University of Texas, Katya students government and public policy. In addition to her work at Campus Vote Project, Katya is interning at Issue One, organizing Texas students around HR1 with Un-PAC, and is working on communications for state Representative Eddie Rodriguez. Previously, Katya has spent the last 3 years interning at the Texas Civil Rights Project in their voting rights department and as a student program assistant at the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life's New Politics Forum doing statewide collegiate civic engagement development. She has also worked on numerous state and federal electoral campaigns, notably leading student organizing for Julie Oliver's 2020 congressional campaign.

Dr. Mark Ghaly was appointed Secretary of the California Health and Human Services by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2019. In this role, Dr. Ghaly will oversee California’s largest Agency which includes many key departments that are integral to supporting the implementation of the Governor’s vision to expand health coverage and access to all Californians. Dr. Ghaly will work across State government, along with County, City, and private sector partners, to ensure the most vulnerable Californians have access to the resources and services they need to lead healthy, happy, and productive lives.

Before joining Governor Newsom’s team, Dr. Ghaly worked for 15 years in County health leadership roles in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In San Francisco, he was Medical Director of the Southeast Health Center, a public health clinic located in the Bayview Hunters Point community. In addition to having a large primary care pediatrics practice, Dr. Ghaly led the clinic’s transition to the patient-centered medical home model of care, expanded specialty care and diagnostics services, and addressed issues such as teen health, youth violence, food security, and environmental health issues.

In 2011, Dr. Ghaly became the Deputy Director for Community Health and Integrated Programs for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. In this role, Dr. Ghaly directed clinical operations in the Los Angeles County Juvenile Detention system and led the transition of jail health services from the Los Angeles County Sheriff and the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health into one integrated system of care. Dr. Ghaly also led a County team to expand health and behavioral health services on the Martin Luther King, Jr., health campus in South Los Angeles, which included the opening of the public-private Martin Luther King, Jr., Community Hospital. Additionally, Dr. Ghaly was the architect of the Los Angeles County Whole Person Care Pilot program, oversaw the launch of the Drug Medi-Cal Organized Delivery System in Los Angeles County, and established the County’s Office of Diversion and Reentry which has diverted over 3,000 individuals out of County jail and into community-based treatment and permanent supportive housing. Among Dr. Ghaly’s most important accomplishments was the creation and continued development of the County’s Housing for Health program. Since 2012, Housing for Health has supported over 6,500 chronically ill individuals facing homelessness, many of whom are stuck in acute care facilities, to gain permanent supportive housing through federal subsidies and LA County’s Flexible Housing Subsidy Pool.

Mark’s prior clinical work within Los Angeles County also included seeing patients at the Los Angeles County Juvenile Detention System and the Martin Luther King Jr. Outpatient Center Medical Hub that serves children and youth in the Los Angeles Child Welfare System.

Dr. Ghaly was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He earned dual B.A. degrees in biology and biomedical ethics from Brown University, his M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School, and his M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Ghaly completed his residency training in Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Ghaly is married to Christina Ghaly and has four young children.

Dr. Ghaly is honored to serve Governor Gavin Newsom and looks forward to forging partnerships and relationships across California to make the Governor’s vision a reality for the benefit of all Californians.

Howard Gillman became the sixth chancellor of the University of California, Irvine in September 2014. He is an award-winning scholar and teacher with an expertise in the American Constitution and the Supreme Court, and holds faculty appointments in the School of Law, the Department of Political Science, the Department of History, and the Department of Criminology, Law and Society.

Under Chancellor Gillman’s leadership, UCI has accelerated its ascendency among globally preeminent research universities. It has been ranked in the top 10 of all public universities in the nation by U.S. News & World Report; furthered its national leadership in sustainability; solidified its status as a “first choice” school for undergraduates by receiving more than 133,000 freshman and transfer applications for fall 2021; received special recognition for advancing student success and promoting social mobility; fostered regional economic development through UCI Beall Applied Innovation; and expanded its capacity to improve lives in our region and around the world.

A native of Southern California, Chancellor Gillman grew up in North Hollywood and was a first-generation college student. He earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in political science at UCLA.

David Greene, Senior Staff Attorney and Civil Liberties Director, has significant experience litigating First Amendment issues in state and federal trial and appellate courts and has written and lectured extensively on many areas of First Amendment Law, including as a contributor to the International Encyclopedia of Censorship. David was a founding member, way back in 1997, of the Internet Free Expression Alliance, and currently serves on the steering committee of the Free Expression Network, the governing committee of the ABA Forum on Communications Law, and on advisory boards for several arts and free speech organizations across the country. David is also an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where he teaches classes in First Amendment and media law and was, for 19 years, an instructor in the journalism department at San Francisco State University, and a longtime member of the Northern California Society for Professional Journalists Freedom of Information Committee. Before joining EFF, David was for twelve years the Executive Director and Lead Staff Counsel for First Amendment Project. He also previously served as program director of the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression where he was the principal contributor and general editor of the NCFE Quarterly and the principal author of the NCFE Handbook to Understanding, Preparing for and Responding to Challenges to your Freedom of Artistic Expression. He also practiced with the firms Bryan Cave LLP and Hancock, Rothert & Bunshoft. He is a 1991 graduate of Duke University School of Law.

David's work has been recognized by California Lawyer magazine as a 2013 California Lawyer Attorney of the Year, and by the SPJ Northern California as the recipient of its 2007 James Madison Freedom of information Award for Legal Counsel. He was also awarded The Hon. Ira A. Brown Adjunct Faculty Award by USF Law School in 2012.

Alexandria “Alex” Harris is the President of The Andrew Goodman Foundation. In her role, she is responsible for activating the Foundation's goals and vision through the strategic and sustainable growth of the organization. Alexandria first became passionate about voting when she was in elementary school. She participated in many local and national campaigns, organized and registered students to vote on campus, and successfully lobbied the Georgia State Legislature to enact a law that allowed a voter to cast a provisional ballot if they believed they were entitled to vote. The law was the precursor to the Provisional Vote Law enjoyed across the United States today. Alexandria practiced corporate law for nearly a decade. She left the law to become a social entrepreneur, opened a school, and has since helped nonprofits around the world scale. She earned a B.A. from Spelman College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Alex typically spends her free time playing outside with her husband, two small boys, and Mini Schnauzer, Langston Hughes.

Pien Huang is a health reporter on the Science desk. She was NPR's first Reflect America Fellow, working with shows, desks and podcasts to bring more diverse voices to air and online.

She's a former producer for WBUR/NPR's On Point and was a 2018 Environmental Reporting Fellow with The GroundTruth Project at WCAI in Cape Cod, covering the human impact on climate change. As a freelance audio and digital reporter, Huang's stories on the environment, arts and culture have been featured on NPR, the BBC and PRI's The World.

Huang's experiences span categories and continents. She was executive producer of Data Made to Matter, a podcast from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and was also an adjunct instructor in podcasting and audio journalism at Northeastern University. She worked as a project manager for public artist Ralph Helmick to help plan and execute The Founder's Memorial in Abu Dhabi and with Stoltze Design to tell visual stories through graphic design. Huang has traveled with scientists looking for signs of environmental change in Cameroon's frogs, in Panama's plants and in the ocean water off the ice edge of Antarctica. She has a degree in environmental science and public policy from Harvard.

Rafael is a PhD candidate in English at UCLA and a labor organizer with UAW 2865, the union representing 19,000 TAs, Tutors, and Readers at the UC. He has organized on a number of issues, including the fight to pass Proposition 15, international student rights, and racial justice. He is currently active on a west coast-wide housing justice campaign led by academic workers at the University of California, the University of Washington, and CSU.

Alice E. Marwick is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and a Principal Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She researches the social, political, and cultural implications of popular social media technologies. Marwick is the author of Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online (Data & Society 2017), Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity and Branding in the Social Media Age (Yale 2013), and co-editor of The Sage Handbook of Social Media (2017). Her forthcoming book project, The Private is Political, examines how the networked nature of online privacy and visibility disproportionately impacts marginalized individuals in terms of gender, race, sexuality, and socio-economic status. As a 2020 Andrew Carnegie fellow, she is working on a third book about online radicalization.

Syreeta Nolan is a disability advocate at University of California San Diego majoring in Human Health Psychology. She was recently selected as UCSD’s Student-honoree of the Inclusive Excellence Award. She serves as Underrepresented Student Officer for the University of California Student Association and co-founded UCSA’s Disability Ad Hoc Committee that will be pursuing non-profit status to expand their mission to disabled students, faculty, staff and alumni. She is also the co-founder of Disabled in Higher Education on Twitter. Follow this movement @DisInHigherEd and her @nolan_syreeta.

Syreeta identifies as a Black, Disabled, bisexual woman and her lived experiences have informed her advocacy goals along with her career goals. She hopes to go to graduate school for Health Policy and Management towards her goal of transforming the mental health field through comprehensive preventive systems similar to what we have in our physical health system.

To expand your perspective, visit Syreeta’s blog at: https://www.blackinneuro.com/perspectives/i-am-black-and-disabled

Ebonee Rice joined the News Literacy Project in April 2020 as vice president of NLP’s educator network. A strategic coalition builder and community engagement expert, she has spent her career successfully scaling up campaigns and programs in the pursuit of equal access for all.

From 2015 to 2017, she led the national partner engagement program at Enroll America, a nonprofit created to ensure that members of often underserved communities were able to enroll for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Her work resulted in millions of people within minority, women and young adult communities gaining health coverage. After Enroll America closed its doors, she joined the District of Columbia’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education as a community outreach specialist, building compelling digital experiences for constituents that led to positive outcomes for children, educators and families.

Ebonee began her career as a marketing/outreach coordinator for the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks and has also worked for Golden Girl Media, BET Networks and the International Black Women’s Public Policy Institute. A native of Los Angeles, she holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communication from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Emerson is a staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project where he focuses on First Amendment free speech protections.

Prior to joining the ACLU in 2018, he was a legal advisor for Africa at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL). He provided technical legal assistance to African civil society leaders, government officials, law students, and other stakeholders to improve the legal framework protecting the freedom of association, assembly, and expression. Emerson previously served as assistant general counsel to the New York City Council, where he worked to increase transparency for council members’ discretionary spending, and contributed to the council’s friend-of-the-court brief against the NYPD’s “Stop and Frisk” program. In 2011, he was as senior policy fellow in the office of a Member of Parliament in Ghana. Earlier in his career, Emerson conducted research and wrote about U.S. foreign policy for The Century Foundation and worked for the National Democratic Institute’s Central and West Africa Team.

Emerson holds a J.D. from NYU Law, where he was a Root-Tilden-Kern scholar for public interest law, and a Master of Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. He earned a B.A. in political science at Stanford.

Naomi C. Waters is a transfer student at the University of California at Riverside, where she majors in Public Policy and African American Studies. As she continues on her educational path, Naomi has also pursued being a responsible citizen and student advocate. On top of her varying interest in Public Policy and its adjacent disciplines (sociology and political science), she is fascinated by the study of law.

Keith E. Whittington is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University, and Chair of the Academic Committee of the Academic Freedom Alliance. He writes about American constitutional law, politics and history and American political thought. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas School of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, and Harvard Law School and is a member of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Atlantic, among other outlets, and he is a regular contributor to the Volokh Conspiracy blog. He is the author of several books, including Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech and Repugnant Laws: Judicial Review of Acts of Congress from the Founding to the Present. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin and completed his Ph.D. in political science at Yale University.

Essence Wynter is a 4th year Sociology and Black Studies Double Major. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. and currently serves as the Lead for the BSU Demands Team. As a member of the BSU Demands Team, Wynter helped create The Office of Black Student Development and served on all of its search committees.