Jonathan Butcher is the Acting Director of the Center for Education Policy and Will Skillman Senior Research Fellow in Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation.

He has researched and testified on education policy around the U.S., including testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He serves as chair of the South Carolina Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He is the author of The Polarization Myth: America’s Surprising Consensus on Race, Schools, and Sex (Encounter Books, December 2025) and Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth (Bombardier Books, April 2022). He wrote chapters in Higher Education in America: It’s Worse Than You Think (Encounter, 2026), and he co-edited and wrote chapters in The Critical Classroom (The Heritage Foundation, 2022), discussing the racial prejudice that comes from the application of critical race theory in K-12 schools. In 2021, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster nominated Jonathan to serve on the board of the South Carolina Public Charter School District, a statewide charter school authorizer.

Jonathan also co-edited and wrote chapters in the book The Not-So-Great Society, which provides conservative solutions to the problems created by the ever-expanding federal footprint in preschool, K-12, and higher education.