Faculty Director
Guy Charles is the Charles J. Ogletree Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. His scholarship focuses on how law mediates political power and addresses racial subordination. He teaches courses on civil procedure, election law, constitutional law, race and law, legislation and statutory interpretation, law, economics, and politics, and law, identity, and politics. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute. He was appointed by former President Biden to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. His academic articles have appeared in journals such as the Michigan Law Review, Michigan Journal of Race and Law, Georgetown Law Journal, Journal of Politics, California Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, and Constitutional Commentary. His public writings have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time, The Atlantic, Slate, among others. Prof. Charles received his JD from the University of Michigan Law School and clerked for the Honorable Damon J. Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Before joining Harvard Law School, he was on the faculties of Duke Law School and the University of Minnesota Law School.
Managing Director
Destiny Peery is a social psychologist and legal scholar by training whose research has focused on the intersections of race, identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and law and policy. She was previously a law professor, teaching criminal law, anti-discrimination law, and social science and the law. Destiny also has conducted research on the legal profession for the American Bar Association and the National Association of Women Lawyers and served as a consultant across the legal profession. She earned a JD and PhD in social psychology from Northwestern University.
Program Coordinator
Marina Apostol is an experienced administrative professional who has been with Harvard Law School for more than ten years. Prior to joining the Houston Institute full time in 2024, she also supported the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program.
Director of Research on Democratic Reform
Michael Latner is a political scientist whose scholarship focuses on electoral system design and the causes and consequences of electoral system bias, addressing both the theoretical and practical dimensions of democratic reform. He has published in scientific journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, and Election Law Journal. Michael has served as an advisor, consultant, and expert for local and state governments, non-profit voting rights groups, and in voting rights discrimination litigation. He received his PhD in political science from the University of California, Irvine, and has been a faculty member in the Political Science Department at California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo since 2008.
Race & Law Clinic Director
Michelle Leung is a civil rights attorney whose practice has focused on police misconduct, prison conditions, and discrimination. She served for over 10 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Civil Rights Unit in the District of Massachusetts. She also served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General and as a trial attorney in the Special Litigation Section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Michelle received her BA from Stanford University and her JD from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
Strategic Litigation & Advocacy Director
Alora Thomas-Lundborg is an experienced litigator with more than a decade of practice experience. Before joining the Houston Institute, Alora was a Senior Staff Attorney in the ACLU Voting Rights Project. Alora has litigated voting rights cases throughout the country, including challenges to voter suppression and gerrymandering and co-authored several Supreme Court amicus briefs. Alora also has experience as a litigator at WilmerHale and Simpson Thacher and as a law clerk to Chief Judge Brodie in the Eastern District of New York. Alora received her JD from Columbia Law School.
Institute Fellows
Guiner Project Postdoctoral Fellow
Jessala A. Grijalva is a political scientist whose research examines how race structures political membership, the distribution of political power, and democratic development in the United States. Her current book project, Herrenvolk Democracy: Race, Exclusion, and the American Political Order, asks why, after nearly 250 years of democratic development, the United States has not consolidated a multiracial democracy. Her broader research addresses Latino political behavior, immigration and citizenship, electoral institutions, and democratic reform. She is also developing the Power-Sharing Index, which measures the extent to which political power, civil standing, and protection from coercive domination are shared across groups. Before joining the Houston Institute for Race & Justice, Jessala was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies. Her scholarship has appeared in PS: Political Science & Politics. She received her PhD in political science from the University of Notre Dame, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.
Visiting Fellow, Guinier Project
Erzen Oncel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at Özyeğin University. Her research examines political elites, with a focus on social background, descriptive representation,
and elite circulation over time. Using comparative and micro-level approaches, she studies how
leaders’ characteristics shape patterns of representation across political institutions. She served as co-PI and project manager of the World Bank–funded Global Leadership Project,
coordinating more than 250 country experts and overseeing the expert-coded collection of
data on 75,000 leaders across more than 150 countries. Her work has been published in journals
including the American Political Science Review and Perspectives on Politics.