Dr. Sheri Atkinson is the associate vice chancellor for student life, campus community and retention services at UC Davis. Previously she served as executive director for community resource centers. She also served as director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center for 10 years and has worked in Student Affairs at UC Davis for over 16 years.
She earned her master’s in higher education and student affairs at the Ohio State University and her doctorate in educational leadership at UC Davis.

UC Riverside’s Chief Compliance Officer, Kiersten Boyce (she/her), heads Riverside’s chief compliance division, including UCR’s Office of Civil Rights. The Chief Compliance Officer oversees UCR’s Clery Act compliance, manages the campus privacy and policy programs, and provides services related to conflicts of interest and delegations of authority. Kiersten is UCR’s Locally Designated Official, responsible for whistleblower reports and investigations, and responsible for compliance with Title VI, Title VII, and other civil rights laws. She chairs UCR’s Ethics & Compliance Risk and Audit Controls Committee and the Investigations Group, and is a member of the Chancellor’s Free Speech Working Group.

Kiersten joined UCR in 2018 from the College of William & Mary in Virginia, where she established the compliance and equity office. Kiersten is a graduate of Georgetown Law, and began her career at the law firm of Clery, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, where she worked in their D.C. and London offices.

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. Before that he was a professor at Duke University from 2004-2008, and from 1983-2004 was a professor at the University of Southern California Law School.

He is the author of eleven books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. His most recent books are, We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century (Picador Macmillan) published in November 2018, 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 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.

Carlos E. Cortés, Ph.D., is professor of history emeritus at the University of California, Riverside. Cortés serves on the faculties of the Harvard Institutes for Higher Education, the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication, and the Federal Executive Institute. He has lectured widely throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia on such topics as race and ethnicity; multiculturalism; intercultural communication; diversity in the media; multicultural, global, and bilingual education; Hispanic culture; Latin American and Chicano history; and the implications of diversity for education, government, and private business.

Michelle N. Deutchman is the inaugural executive director of the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement (Center). In this role, she oversees the Center’s operations, programming and research including its multidisciplinary national fellowship program. Deutchman facilitates workshops for staff, students, administrators and law enforcement on First Amendment principles and how to safeguard free speech at universities while simultaneously maintaining a safe and inclusive campus climate. Her work to study and shape the national discourse on expression and engagement touches all 10 UC campuses as well as higher education institutions across the county.

Before joining the Center, Deutchman served for 14 years as western states civil rights counsel and national campus counsel for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a non-profit organization that combats bigotry, prejudice and anti-Semitism. As national campus counsel, she focused on emerging trends and challenges pertaining to free expression at colleges and universities. Her work included drafting state and federal legislative testimony and creating training modules for use with ADL’s award-winning anti-bias education program.

During her tenure at ADL, Deutchman also developed subject matter expertise on hate crime laws and how to respond to bias-motivated incidents effectively. She received certification from the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training and educated thousands of local, state and federal law enforcement about the First Amendment and hate crime legislation.

From 2014-2018, Deutchman taught a law seminar at UCLA School of Law that she designed, Sword or Shield: Contemporary Free Exercise Issues.

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

In August 2020, Michael V. Drake, M.D., became the 21st president of the University of California’s system of 10 campuses, six academic health centers, three nationally affiliated labs, more than 290,000 students and 230,000 faculty and staff. President Drake also holds faculty appointments at the UCSF School of Medicine as a professor of ophthalmology and at the UC Riverside School of Medicine as a professor of medicine.

President Drake served as the 15th president of The Ohio State University (OSU) from 2014 through June 2020. Prior to his six years at OSU, his entire academic career had been at the University of California, including nine years as chancellor of UC Irvine (2005–2014) and five years as UC systemwide vice president for health affairs (2000–2005).

President Drake received his A.B. from Stanford University and his M.D. and residency training from UCSF. He subsequently spent more than 25 years on the faculty of the UCSF School of Medicine, ultimately as the Steven P. Shearing Professor of Ophthalmology and senior associate dean.

During more than two decades of national leadership in higher education, Dr. Drake has served as president of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society and has chaired the boards of the Association of Academic Health Centers (AAHC), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). He currently serves as Chair of the Board of the Commonwealth Fund, a century-old organization that works to achieve a health care system with better access, improved quality and greater efficiency for the benefit of society’s most vulnerable populations.

President Drake has published numerous articles and co-authored six books. He has received dozens of awards for teaching, public service, mentoring and research, as well as five honorary degrees. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Under President Drake’s leadership, the University of California has expanded its strong commitment to access, affordability and academic excellence, all while weathering the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to this global crisis, President Drake instituted critical public health protections for UC students, staff and faculty, including strong mask and vaccine mandates, which kept infection and fatality rates across the UC system dramatically lower than in surrounding communities.

During this period, the university also continued to grow its enrollment, increase student diversity, and enhance student support and affordability. In July 2021, the president proposed, and the UC Board of Regents approved, a multiyear Tuition Stability Plan that helps students and families budget for a UC education by keeping tuition stable and predictable and providing new financial aid resources. In early 2022, President Drake also committed to creating a path to a debt-free UC education for students by significantly expanding need-based financial aid offerings. This included the launch in spring 2022 of the UC Native American Opportunity Plan, which ensures that in-state systemwide tuition and student services fees are fully covered for California students who are enrolled in federally recognized Native American, American Indian, and Alaska Native tribes. At the same time, the university admitted a record number of California first-year students for the fall of 2022, with an increase in the number of underrepresented students.

Under President Drake’s leadership, the university also achieved greater state funding stability. A five-year funding compact established with California Gov. Gavin Newsom will enable the university to make critical long-term investments in its students, faculty, research and infrastructure. The 2022-23 state budget included $185 million to advance UC’s impactful work in addressing the global challenges of climate change — a top priority for the president and the university.

President Drake has been a strong advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging efforts at the university. In particular, he championed an effort to reimagine campus safety and policing at the University of California, leading to a clear set of guiding principles including community and service-driven safety, holistic and inclusive response models, improved data collection and transparency, and clear accountability and independent oversight.

President Drake’s interests outside higher education and health sciences include art and music. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Broad Museum of Art in Los Angeles, California, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Brenda. They have two adult sons and four grandchildren.

Alex Edgar serves as the Student Intern for the Center and is responsible for supporting programming and outreach efforts. Alex first became involved with the Center as a part of the 2022 class of VOICE Initiative Recipients. As part of VOICE, he led Votechella, a civic engagement music festival at UC Berkeley that garnered thousands of attendees, registered hundreds of students to vote, and helped elevate civic education materials.

He is a senior studying political behavior and public policy at UC Berkeley where he serves as the External Affairs Vice President of the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC). In recognition of his civic work, Alex was a 2022 recipient of the John Lewis Youth Leadership Award by the National Association of Secretaries of State and 2023 California Young Steward Leader Award from California Forward. He has traveled the country speaking about the importance of increased advocacy and funding for intentional youth engagement, particularly in support of their voting and civil rights. He has also been published in Forbes, featured in CBS News Bay Area, and provides civic engagement consulting for nonprofits, foundations, and college campuses.

Dr. Flores is proud to be a lifelong product of the California public education system, from K- 12 to her PhD in Urban Planning from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She is an Associate Professor at California State University Long Beach in the interdisciplinary master’s program in Equity, Education & Social Justice. In this role, she trains students as emerging scholars and practitioners focused on justice, power, and resistance. She draws on current and community events to anchor academic ideas in everyday life and uses critical pedagogies to engage students in deep analyses of social and educational inequities from the local to the global.

In her research, Dr. Flores studies sex and gender-based harassment experienced online, in public spaces, and at academic conferences. Her contributions explore a range of topics including gendered public space, street harassment, Title IX, and the targeted harassment of faculty by members of the public. She is committed to public scholarship and civic engagement, and in her previous research as a Fellow with the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement she examined the ways in which targeted harassment may silence faculty, leading to self-censorship. Most recently, she completed a sex educator certification, noting the urgent need for accurate, non-shaming, justice-based sex education programming as a component of campus sexual assault prevention efforts.

Dr. Flores is a past fellow with The OpEd Project and her public writing has been featured in national outlets such as The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Ms. Magazine Blog, YES! Magazine and Progressive Planning Magazine. Before returning to academia, Dr. Flores worked as a political messaging strategist and jury consultant, conducting focus group research for legal cases and political campaigns in more than thirty states.

Dr. Mary Anne Franks is the Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor in Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law at the George Washington University Law School. She is an internationally recognized expert on the intersection of civil rights, free speech, and technology. Her other areas of expertise include family law, criminal law, criminal procedure, First Amendment law, and Second Amendment law.

Dr. Franks is also the President and Legislative & Tech Policy Director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating online abuse and discrimination. In 2013, she drafted the first model criminal statute on nonconsensual pornography (sometimes referred to as “revenge porn”), which has served as the template for multiple state laws and for pending federal legislation on the issue. She served as the reporter for the Uniform Law Commission’s 2018 Uniform Civil Remedies for the Unauthorized Disclosure of Intimate Images Act and frequently advises state and federal legislators on various forms of technology-facilitated abuse. Dr. Franks also advises several major technology platforms on privacy, free expression, and safety issues. She has been an Affiliate Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project since 2019.

Dr. Franks is the author of the award-winning book, The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech (Stanford Press, 2019). She was awarded a Knight Foundation grant to support research for her second book, Fearless Speech, which is expected in 2024. Her scholarship has also appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the California Law Review, and UCLA Law Review, among others.

Prior to joining the GW faculty, Dr. Franks was the Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair at the University of Miami School of Law and an Affiliated Faculty member of the University of Miami Department of Philosophy. She previously taught at the University of Chicago Law School as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law and at Harvard University as a lecturer in social studies and philosophy. She holds a JD from Harvard Law School as well as a doctorate and a master’s degree from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She was named a member of the American Law Institute in October 2018 and is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.

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.

Patrick R. Grzanka is Professor of Psychology and inaugural Divisional Dean of Social Sciences at the University of Tennessee’s flagship campus in Knoxville. He is also President-Elect of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. His applied social issues research on race and racism, sexualities and LGBT+ issues, and reproductive justice has been published widely, and his work has been funded by the National Science Foundation. Terminally undisciplined, he holds a Ph.D. in American studies and a B.A in journalism, both from the University of Maryland.

Catherine E. Lhamon is the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, where she has served since the United States Senate confirmed her in October 2021 following President Biden’s nomination for her in May 2021. From January through October 2021, Assistant Secretary Lhamon served as Deputy Assistant to President Biden for Racial Justice and Equity, where she managed the President's equity policy portfolio. From December 2016 until January 2021, she chaired the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, to which President Obama appointed her. She also served in California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Cabinet as Legal Affairs Secretary from January 2019 through January 2021. Before these roles, Lhamon had also been Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, to which President Obama nominated her and the Senate confirmed her in 2013. In addition to her government service, Lhamon has litigated civil rights cases at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, National Center for Youth Law, and Public Counsel Law Center. Earlier in her career, Lhamon taught federal civil rights appeals at Georgetown University Law Center in the Appellate Litigation Program and clerked for the Honorable William A. Norris on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In 2023, Disability Rights California honored Lhamon with their National Leadership Award. YaleWomen honored Lhamon with their Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in 2019 and the Feminist Majority Foundation and Ms. Magazine gave Lhamon their Wonder Women Award in 2018. In 2016, Politico Magazine named Lhamon one of Politico 50 Thinkers Transforming Politics and the National Action Network honored Lhamon with their Action & Authority Award. In 2015, Yale Law School named Lhamon their Gruber Distinguished Lecturer and the Association of University Centers on Disabilities awarded Lhamon their Special Recognition Award. Chronicle of Higher Education named Lhamon to their 2014 Influence List as the Enforcer. The Daily Journal listed her as one of California’s Top Women Litigators in 2010 and 2007, and as one of the Top 20 California Lawyers Under 40 in 2007. In 2004, California Lawyer magazine named Lhamon Attorney of the Year for Civil Rights.

Lhamon received her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was the Outstanding Woman Law Graduate, and she graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College.

Dania Matos leads with love. As the fourth Vice Chancellor for the Division of Equity & Inclusion (E&I) at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and a member of Chancellor Carol Christ’s Cabinet, she guides strategies that prioritize social justice, anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Specifically, she oversees E&I’s opportunities for students, staff, and faculty. Dania also leads divisional Thriving Initiatives, each of which offers culturally responsive services to specific communities across campus.

Dania has always championed equity work in the private, nonprofit, and government sectors, and has even taken her talents to Broadway. She was the first deputy chief diversity officer at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia; and served in Virginia's public defender’s office. Prior to coming to UC Berkeley, she was the first associate chancellor and chief diversity officer at the University of California, Merced.

Born in Puerto Rico, Dania is proud to have been raised by a single mom and grandmother–two women she credits for shaping her work, advocacy, and leadership style. She holds a J.D. from the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law; and a BA from Brown University.

Dr. Teri Platt is currently an Associate Professor of Public Administration, Faculty Associate for the Center for Cancer Research and Therapeutic Development, and the Director of the Isabella T. Jenkins Honors Program at Clark Atlanta University. She has over 15 years of teaching experience in public policy, research methodologies, and American government. Dr. Platt actively supports student voter and civic engagement through partnerships and collaboration with the Andrew Goodman Foundation, ALL IN Democracy Challenge, and as a member of the advisory board for the Students Learn, Students Vote coalition. The research of Dr. Platt explores the intersections of social determinants of health, civic engagement, and self-efficacy. Dr. Platt has presented over 25 professional papers on topics ranging from analysis of political leadership, the political implications of demographic shifts in urban areas, and policy analyses of federal and local policies designed to address urban decline. Her upcoming book titled People and Places: Urban Political Landscapes in America provides a comprehensive assessment of the impacts and implications that demographic and population shifts over time on city politics and urban policy agendas.

Lara Schwartz teaches at American University School of Public Affairs, where she founded and directs the Project on Civic Dialogue. She specializes in civic dialogue and campus speech, constitutional law, civil rights, politics, communications, and policy. Drawing on her experience as a legislative lawyer, lobbyist, and communications strategist in leading civil rights organizations, Lara emphasizes collaborative learning and universal design in her teaching. She has served as a Faculty Fellow at AU’s Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning.

Dr. Nancy Thomas serves as the Senior Advisor to the President for Democracy Initiatives and the Executive Director of the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education (IDHE) at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). IDHE is the nation’s leading applied research center on student political learning and participation in democracy. Her work and scholarship center on higher education’s democratic mission, college student political learning and participation in democracy, campus climates for democratic learning, inclusion, and engagement, and dialogue, free speech, inclusion, and academic freedom. She also designed and oversees the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, NSLVE (“n-solve”), a study of student voter participation involving nearly 1,200 U.S. colleges and universities nationwide. She is the author or editor of multiple book chapters, papers, articles, and collections on higher education’s role in democracy, including the monograph, Educating for Deliberative Democracy. Dr. Thomas holds a law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law and a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Teresa Watanabe covers education for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the Times in 1989, she has covered immigration, ethnic communities, religion, Pacific Rim business and served as Tokyo correspondent and bureau chief. She also covered Asia, national affairs and state government for the San Jose Mercury News and wrote editorials for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. A Seattle native, she graduated from USC in journalism and in East Asian languages and culture.