Linda Chavez
Chairman
Linda Chavez is Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity. She has published opinions and columns in newspapers across the country and appears regularly on cable news. Chavez is the author of the three books: Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation, An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal, and Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics. She has been honored by the Library of Congress as a "Living Legend" and as nominee for Secretary of Labor by President George W. Bush.
Chavez has held many appointed positions and has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. Among her appointed positions has been Chairman, National Commission on Migrant Education (1988-1992); White House Director of Public Liaison (1985); Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1983-1985); and member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (1984-1986). Chavez was also the Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Maryland in 1986 and was elected by the United Nations' Human Rights Commission to serve a four-year term as U.S. Expert to the U.N. Sub-commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.
Chavez earned her BA from the University of Colorado.
Devon Westhill
President and General Counsel
Devon Westhill is an attorney focused on matters of constitutional and civil rights. He researches, speaks, and writes about civil rights, civil liberties, and related issues such as race relations, social change, and equal opportunity.
Mr.Westhill's writing has been published in numerous outlets including Newsweek, National Review, and The Wall Street Journal. He has spoken hundreds of times at college campuses, conferences, and on radio and TV programs, and he is frequently quoted in print publications such as the Washington Post. Mr. Westhill has also provided testimony to both houses of the U.S. Congress, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and as an expert witness in federal court.
Immediately prior to his current position, Mr. Westhill led the civil rights office at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the Trump administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights. He has also worked at the U.S. Department of Labor, Federalist Society, and as a criminal trial lawyer in private practice. Mr. Westhill is a U.S. Navy veteran with degrees from UNC at Chapel Hill and the University of Florida.
Rudy Gersten
Executive Director
Gersten is Executive Director of the Center for Equal Opportunity. In this role, he is the chief financial officer, coordinates fundraising efforts, and manages the office. Gersten writes appeals to donors as well as updates on our activities.
Mr. Gersten has written columns in the Washington Post, National Review Online, Townhall.com, among others. He has been quoted in the Washington Post and CNN on issues of race and ethnicity and appeared on radio shows and podcasts to discuss a variety of issues.
Gersten earned his B.A. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland.
Stuart Taylor, Jr.
Of Counsel and Senior Fellow
Taylor is an author and freelance journalist focusing on legal and policy issues including unfairness and excessive punishment in the criminal justice system. He has coauthored three critically acclaimed books and has written since 1980 for leading publications including The New York Times, American Lawyer Media, National Journal, Newsweek, RealClearPolitics, and many other newspapers and magazines. Taylor has been interviewed on all major broadcast networks and has won numerous journalism honors. Taylor and coauthor KC Johnson wrote both The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities and Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Taylor is also known for his collaboration with Richard Sander on Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. Taylor earned his BA from Princeton and his JD from Harvard Law School.
Anthony Pericolo
Visiting Fellow
Anthony Pericolo is CEO’s first Visiting Legal Fellow. He was also a fellow in CEO’s inaugural 2022 Civil Rights Fellowship.
Anthony is a 2023 graduate of Harvard Law School and a patent litigator in Washington, D.C. Before law school, Anthony earned dual degrees in economics and electrical and computer engineering from the University of Rochester.
Besides his appreciation for intellectual property law, Anthony is passionate about civil rights work. He grew up in Westfield, New Jersey, and is the son of Italian immigrants. He learned the value of hard work and equal opportunity through his family, who came to the U.S. with little but the clothes on their backs. Appreciative of the opportunities that the United States gave them, his parents made Anthony’s middle name, Amerigo, after the Italian cartographer from whom this nation derived its name. He was the first person in his family to attend college. Anthony wishes that the structures that enabled his hardworking parents to move upward can pervade future generations.
Peter Abernathy
Visiting Legal Fellow
Peter Abernathy is Visiting Legal Fellow. Peter returned to CEO after participating in CEO's inaugural Civil Rights Fellowship in 2022.
Peter is a 2024 graduate of George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School and currently serving as a law clerk to the Hon. Caroll A. Weimer of the Thirty-First Circuit Court of Virginia.
Before college, Peter served for two years as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Londrina, Brazil. After concluding his full-time missionary service, Peter earned dual degrees in Geospatial Intelligence and History from Brigham Young University.
Prior to law school, Peter was a law enforcement intelligence analyst for Memphis Police Department. His experiences in that position inspired him to pursue a career in civil rights law to protect the right of all Americans to be judged on their own merit and character, not their appearance or lineage.
Peter lives in Northern Virginia with his lovely wife and three children.
In Memoriam - Althea Nagai
August 2024
It is with great sadness the Center for Equal Opportunity mourns the passing of Althea Nagai, longtime CEO Senior Research Fellow, who died today after a long illness. Althea was a member of the CEO family from its inception in 1995. Her work exposing the breadth and depth of racial preferences in college admissions shaped public opinion and not only helped lay the groundwork for nine statewide ballot initiatives to ban the government’s use of race, but also the landmark Supreme Court cases against the University of North Carolina and Harvard banning preferences in college admissions.
Althea was the author of dozens of CEO studies at more than 80 undergraduate and graduate colleges and universities. Indeed, her essays “Too Many Asian Americans” and “Harvard Investigates Harvard” laid bare the harm that racial preferences inflict on Asian Americans, which was a key factor in the Supreme Court’s decisions. Her final study, “Racial and Ethnic Preferences at the University of Maryland,” documented how schools will need to make substantive changes to their admissions procedures if they are to comply with the Supreme Court rulings in SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. University of North Carolina. All of her groundbreaking studies can be viewed here.
Her analysis was elegant, and her writing made a complicated issue clear and comprehensible. Althea was a wonderful colleague for some 30 years. But she was also a friend, who will be deeply missed.
She was preceded in death by her late husband and co-author of many CEO studies, Robert Lerner. She is survived by her husband of many years Ken Masugi and son Joshua Yoshio Lerner.