Jonathan R. Alger is American University’s 16th president.

President Alger is an experienced and visionary higher education leader who spent the last 12 years as president of James Madison University (JMU).

Under his leadership, JMU created and implemented a bold and visionary strategic plan focused on engaged learning, community engagement, and civic engagement, and developed many new initiatives such as the Valley Scholars Program for first-generation students, the comprehensive and highly successful Unleashed fundraising campaign, and the comprehensive Task Force on Racial Equity. President Alger also led JMU to achieve the R2 national research university designation and helped to grow the university’s external research funding by 92 percent from 2019 to 2023.

President Alger is a nationally recognized scholar and speaker on higher education policy and law, who has published numerous articles for scholarly journals and publications such as The Journal of College and University Law and The Law of Higher Education.

A national leader in the field of civic engagement in higher education, Alger received the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge Standout Campus President Award in 2019 and is past chair of that organization’s Presidents Council. He co-taught a leadership seminar in JMU’s Honors College and previously taught graduate and undergraduate courses at Rutgers University and the University of Michigan in law, higher education, public policy, and diversity.

President Alger currently serves as vice chair of the national board of directors for the American Association of Colleges and Universities, as chair of the Association of Governing Boards’ Council of Presidents, and on the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. He also is a member of the Council on Competitiveness, Council on Foreign Relations, and Institute of Citizens and Scholars’ College Presidents for Civic Preparedness. He is past board chair of Campus Compact and the National Association of College and University Attorneys and has served in many other higher education board and national leadership roles.

President Alger previously served as senior vice president and general counsel at Rutgers University, and as assistant general counsel at the University of Michigan, where he played a key leadership role in the university’s efforts in two important Supreme Court cases on diversity and admissions and coordinated one of the largest amicus brief coalitions in Supreme Court history. Earlier in his career he worked for the American Association of University Professors and the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

President Alger earned his bachelor of arts with high honors and Phi Beta Kappa from Swarthmore College, majoring in political science with a public policy concentration and a minor in history and his juris doctor with honors from Harvard Law School.

President Alger was born and raised outside Rochester, New York. He and his wife, Mary Ann, have a daughter named Eleanor, who holds degrees from Miami University (Ohio) and the Savannah College of Art and Design.

President Alger has sung with acclaimed choral groups that have toured internationally, made professional recordings, and performed on national television. His other interests include travel, history, tennis, hiking, and coin collecting.

Elizabeth Earle Beske is the Associate Dean for Scholarship and a tenured Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law. She served as Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Law Review and was designated a Kent Scholar and Stone Scholar. Upon graduation, she received the John Ordronaux prize for highest academic achievement in her graduating class.

After graduation, Ms. Beske clerked for Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court. Ms. Beske spent 4 years as an appellate litigator at Munger, Tolles, & Olson LLP in San Francisco, California before moving to Bethesda, Maryland with her family. In recent years, she has worked as a consultant specializing in appellate writing.

In 2018, Professor Beske received the Washington College of Law Excellence in Teaching Award. At the law school, she teaches Civil Procedure, Federal Courts, and Constitutional Law, and her scholarship focuses on Article III, adjudicative retroactivity, and the separation of powers.

Heather Hughes teaches commercial, business, and property law. Her current research concerns the impact of emerging technologies on law and the legal profession. Before joining the Washington College of Law in 2007, Professor Hughes practiced in the business department at Morrison & Foerster LLP and was an assistant professor as part of the founding faculty at FIU College of Law. Professor Hughes won, in 2019, the WCL Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 2017 she won the Edwin A. Mooers Scholar Award and, in 2010, the Emalee C. Godsey Scholar Award.

Priya Baskaran is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Entrepreneurship Law Clinic (ELC). As Director of the Clinic, Professor Baskaran provides pro-bono transactional legal support to small businesses and individual entrepreneurs in D.C. and Virginia. Professor Baskaran’s scholarship, advocacy, and teaching centers on increasing economic opportunity through transactional lawyering.

Prior to joining the Faculty at American University Washington College of Law, Professor Baskaran was an Associate Professor at West Virginia University College of Law where she taught in the Business Law curriculum and served as the Director of the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Law Clinic. She is an expert in employment-related collateral consequences in West Virginia and recently testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights West Virginia Committee. Professor Baskaran has also taught in the Social Enterprise & Nonprofit Law Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center where she was a Visiting Professor and Supervising Attorney.

Professor Baskaran previously worked as a Staff Attorney for the Community and Economic Development Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School, where she provided transactional legal services to community based organizations, non-profits, and small businesses in the City of Detroit. Professor Baskaran has also worked on international land use issues as a research fellow for the East West Management Institute. Her work focused on environmental and land use issues with vulnerable populations in Cambodia.

Professor Baskaran is a graduate of New York University and the University of Michigan Law School.

Damaris Phillips is a celebrity chef who can currently be seen on the Food Network co-hosting Southern & Hungry with Rutledge Wood and The Bobby and Damaris Show with Bobby Flay.

She is also the 2013 winner of Food Network Star, where she impressed judges with her fresh take on Southern cuisine, and won over the audience with her impeccable charm. She then went on to host her own show, Southern at Heart, for five seasons. Damaris can also be seen on several other shows on the network, including Guy's Grocery Games, Cooks vs. Cons, Bakers vs. Fakers, Celebrity Food Fight, and others.

From Louisville, Kentucky, Phillips graduated from Jefferson Community and Technical College with a degree in culinary arts. One of five kids, Damaris learned to cook at an early age and was responsible for cooking one night a week for her large family. Damaris uses her wit and her updated take on Southern cuisine to pack a one-two punch in the kitchen. Her first cookbook, Southern Girl Meets Vegetarian Boy was released by Abrams Books in October 2017.

Professor Ribeiro teaches Civil Procedure, Evidence, and Advanced Evidence. His scholarship focuses on Evidence, Civil Procedure, and Jurisprudence. His work has appeared in the Denver Law Review, Utah Law Review, San Diego Law Review, The International Journal of Evidence and Proof (peer-reviewed), and Law, Probability, & Risk (peer-reviewed).

Professor Ribeiro previously taught at Campbell Law School as an assistant professor (2021-2023), at Boston University School of Law as an adjunct professor (2017-2021), and at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as a visiting professor.

Professor Ribeiro has also worked as a litigation associate at Greenberg Traurig, LLP, where he specialized in commercial real estate litigation. Before that, he served as a law clerk for Judge William G. Young of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Brandon Weiss is the Senior Associate Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs and a tenured Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law. A national expert on U.S. housing law and policy, his research and teaching focus on property, housing, real estate, community economic development, land use, legal ethics, critical theory, and higher education. Weiss won the 2022 Edwin A. Mooers Faculty Scholarship Award and the 2023 WCL Faculty Award for Outstanding Service. His writing on topics like privatization, place-based community development, property theory, the low-income housing tax credit, corporate acquisition of rental housing, fair housing law, and administrative law has been published in a variety of law reviews, including the California Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Harvard Law and Policy Review, UC Irvine Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, Fordham Urban Law Journal, Kansas Law Review, and Harvard Human Rights Journal.

Weiss serves on the executive committees of the Property Law Section, Real Estate Transactions Section (2023 chair), and Community Economic Development Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). He also serves on the board of the international Association of Law, Property, and Society (ALPS). He has previously chaired the Legal Educators Committee of the American Bar Association (ABA) Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law and has served as associate editor of the Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development Law. Weiss has been interviewed by a wide range of media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, KC Star, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jacobin, and many others. His work on the low-income housing tax credit and corporate governance litigation has been cited by the Delaware Court of Chancery.

Weiss formerly taught law at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law, Yale Law School, and the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC) School of Law. He also represented tenants and community-based nonprofits as a Skadden Fellow and Equal Justice Works AmeriCorps Legal Fellow at Public Counsel Law Center and practiced transactional affordable housing law in his hometown of Los Angeles.

Weiss earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was awarded the Dean’s Award for Community Leadership. He also holds a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he focused on urban policy and housing finance. Weiss received his Bachelor of Science in Symbolic Systems (Cognitive Science) from Stanford University.

Jenn White is the host of 1A, the nationally acclaimed daily, live news and conversation program, named for the First Amendment, and produced by WAMU and distributed nationally by NPR. 1A is a show for a changing America and generates conversation about the most important issues of our time. Jenn takes a deep and unflinching look at America, bringing context and insight to stories unfolding across the country and the world.

As 1A host, she delves into important issues such as policy, politics, technology and what connects us across the fissures that divide the country. Jenn also regularly hosts podcasts, specials, and moderates local election coverage for WAMU. During her tenure at WAMU, she has helped grow audiences across the country, both through terrestrial radio and on-demand audio.

A seasoned journalist and podcast host, Jenn has worked in public radio since 1999. Before coming to WAMU, Jenn held several on-air positions at Chicago’s WBEZ, as host of the station’s local two-hour midday show,  Reset with Jenn White, and before that as host of The Morning Shift. She was also a familiar voice on several WBEZ podcasts, including Making Oprah, Making Obama, and 16 Shots, which chronicled the fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald and the trial of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke. Before WBEZ, Jenn was the local host of  All Things Considered at Michigan Radio.

Jenn is also skilled as a public speaker and has moderated numerous on-air gubernatorial and mayoral debates. She is a native of Detroit and graduate of the University of Michigan. She now lives in the D.C. area with her husband and two dogs.