Protect Democracy

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Protect Democracy is a heavily-funded[1] organization using strategic litigation to promote a progressive agenda.[2]

Background

Excerpt from the Protect Democracy website:[3]

"Our founders, who came from the White House Counsel’s Office and upper echelons of the Department of Justice, assembled a group of some of the world’s leading experts on the decline of democracies in the 21st Century to sound the alarm that the global wave of authoritarianism had landed on U.S. shores.
"From our earliest days, we recognized that as much as having an autocrat in the White House posed an acute and immediate danger that required forceful and urgent action, Donald Trump was a symptom — not cause — of the authoritarian movement. And we understood that the threat of authoritarianism would outlast his presidency.
"We believe confronting and defeating this threat requires a generational effort that will evolve and shift over time. Therefore, we set out to build the strongest organizational foundation we could, recognizing that we need to deploy different tools and strategies at different moments. In short, we believe that if we build a good company, it will make good products — in this case, the products being strategic interventions to protect our democracy."

Staff

According to the Protect Democracy Website, the following individuals (with mini bios) are "Board Members".[4]

Ian Bassin is co-founder and Executive Director of Protect Democracy. He previously served as Associate White House Counsel, where in addition to counseling the President and senior White House staff on administrative and constitutional law, his responsibilities included ensuring that White House and executive branch officials complied with the laws, rules and norms that protect the fundamentally democratic nature of our government. His writing on democracy, authoritarianism, and American law and politics has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Salon and other publications. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. *
Jeff Berman is a founding partner of Magnet Companies. He previously served as President of Whalerock Industries, a media and technology company based in West Hollywood, and General Manager of Digital Media at the NFL after holding a series of positions at MySpace. Jeff was the independent director on the board of Buddy Media (acquired by Salesforce) and has advised companies across a broad range of industries. From 2001-2005, he was Chief Counsel to U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. Jeff has also served as a public defender in the District of Columbia and as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. from Connecticut College. *^
Justin Florence has overseen the organization’s work to advance its mission, including legal, policy, advocacy and communications strategies, as Protect Democracy’s Co-Founder and Legal Director. Justin previously served in the Office of the White House Counsel as Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel to the President; as Senior Counsel on the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee; and in the Supreme Court and Appellate practices of two leading national law firms. Justin is a Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, where he co-teaches the Democracy and Rule of Law Clinic. His writings on democracy and rule of law issues have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School. ^
Jerry Hauser is the founding Chief Executive Officer of The Management ​Action​ Center. He was previously at McKinsey & Company, and has played leadership roles in a number of nonprofits. At Teach For America, he served as the second-in-command for seven years. He also served as the CEO of the Advocacy Institute. Before graduating from Yale Law School, where he was active in legal clinics and a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal, Jerry worked as a high school math and history teacher in Compton, California. He is the coauthor of the book Managing to Change the World. ^
Richard R. Buery, Jr. is the Chief Executive Officer of the Robin Hood foundation, New York City’s largest anti-poverty organization. From 2014-2018, he served as Deputy Mayor for Strategic Policy Initiatives for the City of New York, in which capacity he implemented Pre-K for All, supported women- and minority-owned businesses, and oversaw a number of mayoral offices. In addition to Robin Hood, he has served as Chief Executive Officer at Achievement First, Chief of Policy and Public Affairs at the KIPP Foundation, and President and Chief Executive Officer of the Children’s Aid Society. Richard is a graduate of Yale Law School and Harvard College. Richard founded his first nonprofit at a Roxbury housing development while still in college. He was a teacher in Zimbabwe, a campaign manager to former Cambridge Mayor Ken Reeves, and clerked at the Federal Court of Appeals in New York. Richard is a Public Service Fellow at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, where he served as Distinguished Visiting Urbanist during the Spring of 2019. He is also a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, a Senior Fellow at the GovLab at NYU, a partner at the Perception Institute. He serves on the boards of the Kresge Foundation, iMentor, United to Protect Democracy, Atria Health Collaborative, the Grace Church School, and on the Alumni Advisory Council of the Tsai Leadership Program at Yale Law School. ^
Cecilia Munoz is currently Vice President for Policy and Technology at New America, a Washington-based think tank. She served as Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council under President Obama, and earlier as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs where she oversaw the Obama Administration’s relationships with state and local governments. Before joining the Obama Administration, Cecilia spent 20 years at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization. In June 2000, she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in recognition of her work on immigration and civil rights. She also serves on the Board of the Kresge Foundation and the US Programs Board of the Open Society Foundations. *
Kori Schake is a senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Before joining AEI, Dr. Schake was the deputy director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. She has had a distinguished career in government, working at the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, and the National Security Council at the White House. She has also taught at Stanford, West Point, Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, National Defense University, and the University of Maryland. Dr. Schake is the author of five books, among them “America vs the West: Can the Liberal World Order Be Preserved?” (Penguin Random House Australia, Lowy Institute, 2018); “Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony” (Harvard University Press, 2017); “State of Disrepair: Fixing the Culture and Practices of the State Department” (Hoover Institution Press, 2012); and “Managing American Hegemony: Essays on Power in a Time of Dominance” (Hoover Institution Press, 2009). *

'Advisors'

According to the Protect Democracy Website, the following individuals are "Advisors".[5]

  • Anne Applebaum, Author and Professor of Practice at the London School of Economics
  • Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor of Italian and History, New York University
  • Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University
  • Mona Charen, Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Columnist, and Former Speechwriter to First Lady Nancy Reagan
  • Linda Chavez, Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity, Columnist, and Former White House Director of Public Liaison to President Ronald Reagan
  • Erica Chenoweth, Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
  • Tom Coleman, Former U.S. Representative (R-MO)
  • John Dean, Former White House Counsel
  • Matthew Dowd, Author, Political Analyst, and Former Chief Strategist, Bush-Cheney 2004
  • Mickey Edwards, Former U.S. Representative (R-OK)
  • Mindy Finn, Co-CEO and Founder, Stand Up Republic
  • Michael Gottlieb, Former Assistant United States Attorney and Associate White House Counsel
  • Aziz Huq, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School
  • Marcos Daniel Jimenez, Former United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida
  • Khizr Khan, Lawyer, Constitutional Rights Advocate and Author
  • Rachel Kleinfeld, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
  • Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University
  • John McKay, Former United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington
  • Michael Miller, Associate Professor of Political Science, The George Washington University
  • Yascha Mounk, Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University
  • Brendan Nyhan, Professor of Government, Dartmouth College
  • Spencer Overton, Professor of Law, The George Washington University School of Law
  • Thomas Perrelli, Former Associate Attorney General of the United States
  • Richard Primus, Theodore J. St. Antoine Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
  • Robert Raben, Former Assistant Attorney General
  • Jennifer Richeson, Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology, Yale University
  • Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University
  • Timothy Snyder, Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale University
  • Donald Verrilli, Former Solicitor General of the United States
  • Kimberly Wehle, Professor of Law, University of Baltimore and Former Associate Independent Counsel in the Whitewater Investigation
  • Evan Wolfson, Founder, Freedom to Marry
  • Daniel Ziblatt, Professor of Government, Harvard University

References

  1. ↑ About (accessed August 10, 2022)
  2. ↑ Resource Library (accessed August 10, 2022)
  3. ↑ About (accessed August 10, 2022)
  4. ↑ (accessed August 10, 2022)
  5. ↑ Advisors Our Leadership Team (accessed August 10, 2022)
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