Heather Mac Donald | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Mac Donald in 2015 | |
| Born | Heather Lynn MacDonald[1] (1956-11-23)November 23, 1956 (age 69) |
| Education | Yale University (BA) Clare College, Cambridge (MA) Stanford University (JD) |
| Occupations |
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| Movement | American conservatism |
| Awards | Bradley Prize (2005) |
Heather Lynn Mac Donald (born November 23, 1956) is an Americanconservative political commentator, essayist, lawyer, and author.[3][4][5] She is known for her pro-police views and opposition to criminal justice reform.[6][7][8] She is a fellow of theManhattan Institute think tank and a contributing editor of itsCity Journal.
Heather Mac Donald grew up inLos Angeles,California. Her original family name was MacDonald; she later added the space to her surname, but recalled that it was a "bad idea".[9]
In 1978, she graduated fromYale University with aBachelor of Arts,summa cum laude, inEnglish.[10] After receiving aMellon Fellowship from Yale, she attendedClare College, Cambridge, earning an M.A. in English.[11] While at Cambridge she also studied in Italy through a Cambridge study grant.[11] In 1985, she graduated with aJuris Doctor degree fromStanford Law School.[12]
After graduating from Stanford, Mac Donald clerked for JudgeStephen Reinhardt of theUnited States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and was subsequently an attorney-advisor in the Office of the General Counsel of theU.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a volunteer with theNatural Resources Defense Council.[11]
She is a Thomas W. Smith Fellow of theManhattan Institute think tank[13] and a contributing editor of the institute'sCity Journal.[14][15]
Mac Donald refers to herself as a secular conservative. She has argued that conservatism is superior to liberalism by virtue of the ideas alone, and thatreligion should not affect the argument and is unnecessary for conservatism.[3] Mac Donald maintains that conservative values like small government, self-reliance and liberty can be defended without "recourse to invisible deities or the religions that exalt them."[3]
She has testified on criminal justice and the decarceration movement before theUS Senate Judiciary Committee,[16] has testified before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of theUS House Committee on the Judiciary,[17] and has advocated positions on numerous subjects includingvictimization, philanthropy,[18]immigration reform,[19]crime prevention,[20][21][22]racism,racial profiling,[23] black incarceration,[24]rape, effect of two parents on crime,[24]politics,[25][9]welfare,[26][27] and matters pertaining to cities[9] andacademia.
Mac Donald has criticized welfare andphilanthropic institutions such as theFord Foundation and theCarnegie Corporation for suggesting that welfare is aright; in particular, she has criticized welfare because "generations have grown up fatherless and dependent".[18] She has written that welfare programs serve as a "dysfunction enabler"[9] and that a fall infood stamp use was because "formerwelfare recipients are deciding to go it on their own" — a "move toward self-sufficiency [that] should be cause for celebration", and that "Food pantries ... are in fact a wiser response to temporary hunger than expanding the rolls, for independence is a better guarantee of eating well thanentitlements can ever be."[28]
According to Mac Donald, under American immigration policies, the United States has been "importing another underclass", one with the "potential to expand indefinitely."[19]The New York Times reported in January 2024 that in private emails with anti-DEI commentators affiliated with theClaremont Institute, Mac Donald had recounted "seeing all thenanniesof color walking school children back to their apartments" and derided working mothers who "outsource ... raising a unique child to some one else, especially someone from the low IQ 3rd world" while they advance their careers.[29]
In another private correspondence with Claremont Institute affiliates, Mac Donald criticizedPeter Thiel'sgay marriage (placing 'marriage' insneer quotes), mocking Thiel's husband and saying that Thiel's outside boyfriend who had recently committed suicide showed that gay men “are much more prone” toextramarital affairs “on the empirical basis of testosterone unchecked by female modesty.”[29]
In a 2019 op-ed titled, "Trump Isn’t the One Dividing Us by Race", she argued that Democrats and the media are at fault for racial divisions in the United States. She argued that it is those on the left who have emboldened white supremacists. She argued thatDonald Trump is not racially divisive because he "rarely uses racial categories in his speech or his tweets."[30]
During theCOVID-19 pandemic, she criticized March 2020 shelter-in-place policies as "unbridled panic". She argued in March 2020 that COVID-19 would have a similar casualty rate as theflu, despite public health experts saying otherwise.[31]
Mac Donald has been described as "pro-police".[6] She has rejected descriptions of racism in policing, calling them a "false narrative" and "phantom police racism".[32][6] She has called for a return toTerry stop andfrisk tactics[32] and "zero-tolerance" policing.[32] She has argued that too much criticism of police brutality has made police fearful of engaging in proactive policing, and that this has caused more crime.[32][6][33] She has been a vocal critic ofBlack Lives Matter.[4] While talking to the conservative radio hostRush Limbaugh, she accusedPresident Barack Obama of "attacking the very foundation of civilization" by giving credibility to Black Lives Matter.[34]
During the 2016 presidential election, she described a speech byDonald Trump on criminal justice as "a radical, bold, and important change of course in the prevailing discourse about policing and crime."[35]
She is an outspoken critic ofcriminal justice reform, such as theSentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which she testified against in October 2015.[16] She has spoken out against no-racial-profiling programs for the police, calling them a "politically correct ignoring" of what is known to be the "logical necessity of Islamic terrorism." She has criticized efforts to instate no-racial-profiling policies, calling these efforts an "illogical tautology" because "you cannot be anIslamic terrorist unless you're a member of theMuslim faith".[23]
She has defended thePatriot Act and argued for secrecy and speed in handling problems as well as the sharing of information between departments within the intelligence community, and advocated that the benefits of government power be balanced against the risks of abuse.[21] She stated that the interrogation techniques promulgated in thewar on terror were "light years" from real torture and "hedged around" withbureaucratic safeguards.[20]
In her 2005 testimony to Congress, she claimed that 95% of outstanding homicide warrants inLos Angeles were for undocumented immigrants and that 75% of L.A.'s most wanted list comprised undocumented immigrants. Fact checks byPolitiFact andSnopes found no evidence for those assertions; Mac Donald told PolitiFact in 2020 that the figures were a "rough estimate" given to her by an unnamed member of theLos Angeles Police Department.[36][37]
In September 2019 congressional testimony, Mac Donald cited a July 2019PNAS study on the races of police officers and civilians who are shot, which purported to show that there was no racial bias in police shootings.[38][39] However, the study that she cited has been corrected,[40] and the editors of the journal wrote that the study was unable to support any conclusions about racial bias in police shootings.[38] One of the study's authors, University of Maryland psychology professor David Johnson, toldCityLab that he was "not happy" with the way Mac Donald has characterized the study.[39] The authors of the study later called for its retraction, saying that the study continued to be misused, with the authors specifically mentioning editorials by Mac Donald.[41]
Writing inThe New York Times in 2000, Robin Finn described Mac Donald as an "influential institute thinker who risks being stereotyped as a right-leaning academic curmudgeon".[9] ColumnistGeorge F. Will wrote ablurb for Mac Donald's bookThe Burden of Bad Ideas (2000).[9] InThe New York Times, Allen D. Boyer wrote a positive brief review ofThe Burden of Bad Ideas, concluding that "among discussions of urban malaise, where so much hot air has been recycled, this book has the freshness of a stiff, changing breeze".[18]
Tim Lynch, director of theCato Institute's project on criminal justice, gave her 2016 bookThe War on Cops a negative review inReason magazine, concluding, "What Mac Donald calls a 'war on cops' is better described as a much-needed debate about crime, law enforcement tactics, and how to deal with systemic police misconduct," and adding, "Conservatives have some worthwhile ideas to offer in this debate, but Mac Donald's polemics add heat, not light."[8]
Steven Pinker,Charles Murray andShelby Steele provided blurbs for Mac Donald's 2018 bookThe Diversity Delusion.[42]
In spring 2017, a protest group announced plans to "shut down" Mac Donald's speech on theBlack Lives Matter movement at a college campus in California, calling her racist, fascist, and anti-black.[43] On April 7, around 250 protesters surrounded audience members and prevented them from entering the building where she was speaking atClaremont McKenna College, whose president,Hiram Chodosh, afterward said, "Based on the judgment of the Claremont Police Department, we jointly concluded that any forced interventions or arrests would have created unsafe conditions for students, faculty, staff, and guests." Mac Donald ultimately gave the talk to a small audience in theMarian Miner Cook Athenaeum that was live-streamed on Claremont McKenna's website. Chodosh said that "the effort to silence her voice effectively amplified it to a much larger audience."[4] The college subsequently suspended seven students.[44]
Mac Donald is an atheist.[47] She lives in New York City.[48]
