Gerard Robinson

Gerard Robinson is a professor of practice in public policy and law at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia and he holds a joint appointment at the UVA School of Law. His areas of expertise include K-12 and higher education, criminal justice reform, race in American institutions, and the role of nonprofit organizations in civil society. He has co-edited two books, Education Savings Accounts: The New Frontier in School Choice (2017) and Education for Liberation: The Politics of Promise and Reform Inside and Beyond America’s Prisons (2019). He also has published essays about education, public policy, and crime in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law & Social Change (2022) and the University of Virginia Law Review (2023). Between 2023-2024, Robinson traveled to Brazil, Germany, Kenya, and Norway to learn about programs and public policies designed to help incarcerated adults and juveniles.

In the years before moving into the academy, Robinson worked as a fifth grade teacher in Los Angeles, a legislative liaison for the superintendent of the District of Columbia public schools, a legislative aide in the California and Virginia legislatures, president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, and in the office of the Virginia secretary of education under Governor Bob McDonnell. More recently, Robinson served as executive director of the Center for Advancing Opportunity, a Washington, D.C.-based research and education initiative created by a partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the Charles Koch Foundation, and Koch Industries. In that role, he oversaw an $11 million investment into evidence-based solutions to the most pressing education, entrepreneurship, and criminal justice issues throughout the United States by working with faculty and students at HBCUs and other postsecondary institutions.

A native of Los Angeles, California, and a first-generation college graduate, Robinson earned a Masters of Education from Harvard University, a BA from Howard University, and an AA degree from El Camino Community College.  

Robinson has been published or quoted in many news sources, including Bloomberg Government, CNN Opinion, The Daily Progress, Newsweek, The Hill, The New York Times, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and U.S. News & World Report. In addition to print media, Robinson has made frequent appearances on C-SPAN and co-hosted 155 episodes on the popular Learning Curve podcast with Dr. Cara Candal. 

Robinson has spoken before academic, nonprofit, and corporate audiences in the United States and at the University of Oxford and the University of Edinburgh. Other international education tours also included travel to China, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Gambia, Haiti, Israel, and Senegal.