Heather MacDonald is a political and social commentator, attorney and bestseller author.   She is currently the Thomas Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, and a contributing editor at City Journal where she covers higher education, immigration, policing, homelessness and race relations. Heather is a graduate of Yale University, was a Yale Mellon fellow at Clare College at Cambridge University, and received her Juris doctorate degree from Stanford University Law School. She served on the Judge Reinhardt Ninth Circuit Court and in the past worked as an attorney at EPA. Here most recent book is When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty and Threatens Lives", which addresses the decline of our American institutions, especially medicine and the fine arts, due to the institutionalization of systemic racism and the problems of racial disparities. Previous books include The Diversity Delusion and the New York Times bestseller The War on Cops. Her essays can be read at City Journal, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, and many others.  The websites are City-Journal.org and Manhattan.Institute