The crisis in Minnesota: Executive power and civil liberties

Ashley Waters Gundersen is a lecturer at the University of Virginia Law School, where she teaches courses on policing concepts and balancing public safety and civil liberties. She serves as member of the Miller Center's Foundation Board and is a trustee of Saint Anne’s-Belfield School. Previously, she worked at the New York City Police Department as special counsel for intelligence affairs and counsel to the police commissioner. She began her law career at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in New York. She also maintained an extensive pro bono practice with an emphasis on asylum cases and served on the board of The Bronx Defenders. Waters graduated in 2000 from Harvard College and graduated from Harvard Law School in 2005.

Rachel Harmon is the Harrison Robertson Professor of Law and directs the Center for Criminal Justice at the University of Virginia School of Law. One of the nation’s leading scholars on policing and the law, she is the author of The Law of the Police (2024). From 2023 to 2024, Harmon served as senior policy adviser for criminal justice for the White House Domestic Policy Council. Harmon previously worked as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. She also served as a law clerk to Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court. She is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also holds two master’s degrees from the London School of Economics. She earned her law degree from Yale Law School.

David Lazar retired as assistant chief of the San Francisco Police Department in 2025 and is an advisory board member at the University of Virginia School of Continuing and Professional Studies’ Center for Public Safety and Justice. Lazar became a member of the San Francisco Police Department in 1991 and held extensive policing and command-level roles. He earned a BA from Saint Mary’s College and is a graduate of the Police Executive Research Forum’s Senior Management Institute for Police Class 49, Boston. Among other specialized training, he graduated from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government State and Local Executives Course, the Major Cities Police Chief’s Police Executive Leadership Institute Class 8, and the International Collaboration on Policing Program with U.S. Police Agencies in Scotland with Police Scotland. 

Guian McKee is the White Burkett Miller Professor of Public Affairs at the Miller Center. He received a PhD in American history at the University of California, Berkeley, in May 2002, and is the author of Hospital City, Health Care Nation: Race, Capital, and the Costs of American Health Care (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023) and The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia (University of Chicago Press, 2008). At the Miller Center, McKee co-directs the Health Care Policy Project and serves as co-chair of the Presidential Recordings Program. His research focuses on how federal policy, especially in the executive branch, plays out at the local level in American communities.

Richard Schragger is a Miller Center faculty senior fellow and the Perre Bowen Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. His scholarship focuses on the intersection of constitutional law and local government law, federalism, urban policy, and the constitutional and economic status of cities. He also writes about law and religion. He has authored articles on the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, the role of cities in a federal system, local recognition of same-sex marriage, takings law and economic development, and the history of the anti-chain store movement. Schragger holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in legal theory from University College London, and a JD from Harvard Law School.

Daniel Stid is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). His newsletter, The Art of Association, explores civil society, philanthropy, and democratic governance. Stid previously served as the executive director of Lyceum Labs, a nonprofit focused on improving political leadership at the state and local levels, and he advised philanthropists seeking to improve civic life in America. He also served as the inaugural director of the U.S. democracy grant-making program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a partner at the Bridgespan Group, a manager at Boston Consulting Group, an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow at the U.S. House of Representatives, and an assistant professor of political science at Wabash College. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Hope College, a master’s degree from the University of Oxford, and a PhD from Harvard University.

Micah Schwartzman is the Hardy Cross Dillard Professor of Law, the F. D. G. Ribble Professor of Law, and codirector of the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy at the University of Virginia School of Law. His research and teaching areas include law and religion, jurisprudence, and political philosophy. Schwartzman clerked for Judge Paul V. Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Prior to joining the UVA Law faculty, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities. He holds a BA and JD from the University of Virginia and a DPhil in politics from the University of Oxford.