Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the New York Times bestselling author of The War on Cops. She is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize. Mac Donald’s work at City Journal has covered a range of topics, including higher education, immigration, policing, homelessness and homeless advocacy, criminal-justice reform, and race relations. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The New Criterion.

Mac Donald is a prolific author whose most recent book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives (2023), explains how disparate-impact thinking is jeopardizing scientific progress, destroying public order, and poisoning the appreciation of art and culture. The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture (2018) argues that toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture. The War on Cops (2016), a New York Times bestseller, warns that raced-based attacks on the criminal-justice system, from the White House on down, are eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk. In Are Cops Racist? (2010), a collection of Mac Donald’s City Journal essays, Mac Donald investigates the workings of the police, the controversy over so-called racial profiling, and the anti-profiling lobby’s harmful effects on black Americans. In The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan than Today’s (2007), coauthored with Victor Davis Hanson and Steven Malanga, she chronicles the effects of broken immigration laws and proposes a practical solution to securing the country’s porous borders. And The Burden of Bad Ideas (2001), another City Journal anthology, details the effects of the 1960s counterculture’s destructive march through America’s institutions.

A nonpracticing lawyer, Mac Donald clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and was an attorney-advisor in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a volunteer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She has frequently testified before U.S. House and Senate Committees. In 1998, Mac Donald was appointed to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s task force on the City University of New York. She has received numerous awards for her writing:

• Civilian Valor Award (2004), from the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police.
• Integrity in Journalism Award (2008), from the New York State Shields.
• Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration (2008), from the Center for Immigration Studies.
• Quill & Badge Award for Excellence in Communication (2012), from the International Union of Police Associations.
• Excellence in Media Award (2016), from the State Troopers Coalition.
• Excellence in Media Award (2017), from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
• Kenneth Y. Tomlinson Award for Outstanding Journalism (2017), from The Fund for American Studies.
• Heroism Award (2017), from the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association.
• Law Enforcement Patriot of the Year (2018), Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA) Foundation
• Peter Shaw Award (2019), from the National Association of Scholars (NAS).
• Lady of Grace Award, Police Holy Name Society of Nassau County (2019).
• City Journal Award (2022)
• Jeane Kirkpatrick Prize for Academic Freedom, Encounter Books (2022)

A frequent guest on Fox News and other TV and radio programs, Mac Donald holds a B.A. in English from Yale University, graduating with a Mellon Fellowship to Cambridge University, where she earned an M.A. in English and studied in Italy through a Clare College study grant. She holds a J.D. from Stanford University Law School.

At the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation’s annual meeting, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called Mac Donald, “the greatest thinker on criminal justice in America today.”