The Catholic College of the South
Emmett J. McGroarty
Meet Emmett J. McGroarty
Emmett J. McGroarty came to Belmont Abbey College in 2023 from the Catholic University of America’s Institute for Human Ecology, where he was a faculty fellow and director of the program on the Constitution and Catholic Social Doctrine. Prior to that, he directed the federalism and education programs at the American Principles Project, which ignited the nationwide movement to defeat the Common Core initiative and which was among the first policy groups to raise concern about student privacy and social emotional learning. He was one of the founders of the nationwide networking group Truth in American Education, which existed from 2011 through 2017 and which had associated coalition groups in twenty states.
Emmett’s previous experience includes the government, non-profit, and for-profit sectors. He served on the Trump Transition Team from August 2016 through January 21, 2017. During the administration of George W. Bush, he served at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office for Community and Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, where he worked on regulatory reform. Then, at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, he served in the Trafficking in Persons Office, with responsibilities for service delivery to victims and the design of the U.S. Government’s public awareness campaign for the identification of victims; the program and its public awareness campaign won numerous awards including the Assistant Secretary’s Program Recognition Award, the Public Relations Society of America’s Silver Anvil, and PRWeek’s Silver SABRE. His past experience also includes working as a litigator in two national law firms, serving as general counsel to Phil Gramm for President, and serving as deputy political director of Bauer for President.
Books and Book Chapters
- “Federalism’s Personalist Ends,” in Federalism in a Divided America, ed. Nicholas Jacobs (De Gruyter forthcoming) (with Brendan McGroarty).
- Restoring the Republic: A Blueprint for Constitutional Administration (Pioneer Institute 2024) (with Charles Keckler and Adam Millsap).
- Deconstructing the Administrative State: The Fight for Liberty (Liberty Hill and APPF 2018) (with Jane Robbins and Erin Tuttle).
Journal Articles
- “Subsidiarity, Mission, and the Moral Foundation of Commercial Society,” Social Philosophy & Policy, forthcoming (Cambridge University Press) (with Brendan McGroarty).
- “Privacy, Property, and Third-Party Esteem in Arendt’s Constitutionalism” Laws 12, no. 5:75 (2023) (with Brendan McGroarty), https://doi.org/10.3390/laws12050075.
Policy Papers and Briefs
- “Incorrigible Statecraft: Discarding the Meaning of the Human Person as Free, Creative, and Social,” Policy Brief, forthcoming (Center for Governance and Markets, University of Pittsburgh).
- “Congress Plays at Anti-Civics,” Public Discourse (Apr. 21, 2021) (with Jane Robbins).
- “Cogs in the Machine: Big Data, Common Core, and National Testing” (Pioneer Institute, May 2014) (with Jane Robbins and Joy Pullmann).
- “Controlling Education from the Top: Why Common Core Is Bad for America” (Pioneer Institute, May 2012) (with Jane Robbins).
- Contributor, “The Miami Declaration of Principles on Human Trafficking,”
St. Thomas University School of Law and St. Thomas University Graduate
Program in Intercultural Human Rights (February 10, 2005).
Emmett has authored numerous opinion pieces and been a guest on local and national television and talk radio. He has testified before federal and state bodies on over a dozen occasions. He is a graduate of Georgetown University (AB, Philosophy) and the Fordham University School of Law.
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