ACRU Policy Board
Hon. Edwin Meese III
Edwin Meese III served as the seventy-fifth Attorney General of the United States from February 1985 to August 1988. Before serving as Attorney General, he was counselor to President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1985. In this capacity he functioned as the president’s chief policy adviser and had management responsibility for the administration of the cabinet, policy development, and planning and evaluation. During the time he held both these positions, Meese was a member of the president’s cabinet and the National Security Council.
Mr. Meese served as Governor Reagan’s executive assistant and chief of staff in California from 1969-1974 and as legal affairs secretary from 1967-1968. Before joining Governor Reagan’s staff in 1967, he served as deputy district attorney of Alameda County California.
Mr. Meese is a distinguished fellow and holder of the Ronald Reagan Chair in Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation; a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; a member of the Board of Regents of the National College of District Attorney; and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute of United States Studies, University of London. He has authored many scholarly books on American government, most recently The Heritage Guide to the Constitution.
He earned his B.A. from Yale University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Ambassador Curtin Winsor, Jr.
Curtin Winsor, Jr. was selected by President Reagan to be U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica from 1983 to 1985. He served there during the Contra war in Nicaragua and his mission also included the reform of Costa Rica’s economic structure. Ambassador Winsor also served as Senior Consultant on Central America to the Under Secretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.
He served as Manager for International Affairs at the Washington Office of the Chase Manhattan Bank from 1973 to 1979. At the request of Chase’s Chairman, David Rockefeller, he served as Deputy Director of the Alliance for Free Enterprise, an entity formed to support free trade and free market issues, from 1979 to 1983.
Ambassador Winsor received his B. A. from Brown University in 1961, his M. A on Latin American Area Studies in 1964, and his Ph.D. in International Studies from the School of International Service of American University, Washington, D.C. in 1971.
Hans von Spakovsky
Hans von Spakovsky is recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on elections and election reform. He is manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in Heritage’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
He is the co-author with John Fund of the book “Who’s Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk” (Encounter Books, 2012).
Before joining Heritage in 2008, Mr. von Spakovsky served two years as a member of the Federal Election Commission, the authority charged with enforcing campaign finance laws for congressional and presidential elections, including public funding.
He has served on the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and on the Fulton County (Ga.) Board of Registrations and Elections. He is a former vice chairman of the Fairfax County (Va.) Electoral Board and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Board to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
A 1984 graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Law, Mr. von Spakovsky received his B.S. degree in 1981 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Amb. J. Kenneth Blackwell
Ken Blackwell is a member of the Board of Directors of ACRU Action Fund and the Policy Board of ACRU. Mr. Blackwell has had a vast political career. He was mayor of Cincinnati, Treasurer and Secretary of State for Ohio, undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. He has served on the congressionally appointed National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform and the board of the International Republican Institute. He was Co-Chairman of the U.S. Census Monitoring Board from 1999-2001.
He has received many awards and honors for his work in the public sector. These accolades include the U.S. Department of State’s Superior Honor Award for his work in the field of human rights which he received from both the administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. In 2004, the American Conservative Union honored Mr. Blackwell with the John M. Ashbrook Award for his steadfast conservative leadership.
Ken’s commentaries have been published in major newspapers and websites: The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, and Investor’s Business Daily. In addition, he has been interviewed by many media outlets including CBS’s Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, and Fox News Sunday. He is a national bestselling author of three books: Rebuilding America: A Prescription For Creating Strong Families, Building The Wealth Of Working People, And Ending Welfare; The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency; and Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America.
His continuing education has included executive programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. Mr. Blackwell has also received honorary doctoral degrees from ten institutions of higher education. He holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Education degrees from Xavier University in Ohio, where he later served as a vice president and member of its faculty. In 1992, he received Xavier’s Distinguished Alumnus Award and was inducted into Xavier’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2015.
IN MEMORIAM
Professor Walter E. Williams
Walter E. Williams was the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. From 1995 to 2001, he served as Chairman of the Economics Department. He held a B.A. in economics from California State University, Los Angeles, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from UCLA. He also held a Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Union University and Grove City College, a Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College, and a Doctor Honoris Causa en Ciencias Sociales from Universidad Francisco Marroquin, Guatemala, where he is also Professor Honorario.
Dr. Williams authored over 150 publications which have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review, Georgia Law Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Social Science Quarterly, and Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy and popular publications such as Newsweek, Ideas on Liberty, National Review, Reader’s Digest, Cato Journal, and Policy Review. He authored six books: America: A Minority Viewpoint; The State Against Blacks, which was later made into the PBS documentary; Good Intentions, All It Takes Is Guts, South Africa’s War Against Capitalism, which was later revised for South African publication; Do the Right Thing: The People’s Economist Speaks; and More Liberty Means Less Government.
He made scores of radio and television appearances and occasionally as substitute host for the “Rush Limbaugh” radio show. In addition, Dr. Williams wrote a weekly nationally syndicated column carried by approximately 140 newspapers and several web sites.
Dr. Williams served on several boards of directors including Grove City College, the Reason Foundation, and the Hoover Institution. He also served on numerous advisory boards including: Cato Institute, Landmark Legal Foundation, Institute of Economic Affairs, and Heritage Foundation.