Managing Partner
EducationCounsel LLC
Washington,
DC
Biographical Sketch: Art Coleman is a managing partner and co-founder of EducationCounsel LLC. He provides policy, strategic, and legal counseling services to national non-profit organizations and postsecondary institutions throughout the country, where he addresses policy and legal issues associated with student access, diversity, inclusion, expression, and success.
Mr. Coleman was instrumental in the establishment of the College Board's Access and Diversity Collaborative (ADC) in 2004, which he has helped lead for 15 years. With a focus on issues of diversity and inclusion, he has authored amicus briefs in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), Gratz v. Bollinger (2003), and in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (I and II, 2013 and 2016). He is widely published in the field, including most recently as co-author of Understanding Holistic Review in Higher Education Admissions: Guiding Principles and Model Illustrations (College Board, 2018).
Mr. Coleman previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, where, in the 1990s, he led the Department’s development of the Department’s Title VI policy on race-conscious financial aid, as well as OCR’s first comprehensive Title IX sexual harassment policy guidance. He is a member of the Board of Directors of GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network); the Lab School of Washington; and a past chairman of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Higher Education Policy.
A former litigator, Mr. Coleman is a 1984 honors graduate of Duke University School of Law and a 1981 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Virginia. He has testified before the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; he has served as an adjunct professor at two law schools and at two graduate schools of education. In 2019, he is teaching at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education in its Master's Program on Enrollment Management.