Gail Heriot is a professor of law at the University of San Diego School of Law, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and a book fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Heriot co-edited A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education (2021). Her work on race, sex, and civil rights has been published in law reviews such as the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and the Virginia Law Review, as well as popular publications including the Los Angeles Times, National Review, and the Wall Street Journal.

She was co-chair of the 1996 campaign for California’s Proposition 209, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored preferential treatment based on race or sex, and co-chair of the successful campaign to prevent its repeal in 2020.

Heriot is the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project, executive vice president of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, and a member of the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars. She earned her J.D. cum laude at the University of Chicago and graduated with highest distinction from Northwestern University with a B.A. in Political Science.