The following bio is that of an event speaker or guest author. This person is not directly affiliated with the John Locke Foundation.

Larry Purdy is an attorney in private practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota and one of the trial lawyers who represented the plaintiffs in the University of Michigan race preference admissions lawsuits decided by the United States Supreme Court in 2003 (Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz, et al. v. Bollinger). He is the author of Getting Under the Skin of “Diversity”: Searching for the Color-Blind Ideal (Robert Lawrence Press, 2008). He received a B.S. in 1968 from the United States Naval Academy and a J.D. from William Mitchell College of Law in 1977.