Gerard Robinson, Fellow

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 has a joint appointment at the UVA Law School. His areas of expertise are K-12 and higher education, criminal justice reform, race in American institutions, and the role of nonprofit organizations in civil society. Examples of his scholarship include two co-edited books, Education for Liberation: The Politics of Promise and Reform Inside and Beyond America’s Prisons (2019) and Education Savings Accounts: The New Frontier in School Choice (2017), as well as an essay published in the University of Virginia Law Review (2023) and University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law & Social Change (2022). He has been published or quoted in CNN Opinion, Forbes, 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. Between 2020-2023, Robinson co-hosted the popular Learning Curve Podcast with Dr. Cara Candal where they interviewed scholars, entrepreneurs, educators, public and private sector leaders, and 13 Pulitzer Prize winners.

Robinson has testified before local school boards, state legislative and regulatory officials, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and on Capitol Hill. He also has spoken before academic, nonprofit, and corporate audiences in the United States, at Oxford University in England, and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. His international education tours also include travel to China, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Gambia, Germany, Haiti, Israel, Norway, and Senegal.

Robinson, a first-generation college graduate, earned an Ed.M. from Harvard University, a B.A. from Howard University, and an A.A. from El Camino Community College. He is married and has three daughters.