David L. Leal is a senior fellow at the Civitas Institute. He is also a professor of government and a professor (by courtesy) of Mexican American Studies and religious studies in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. In addition, he is the founding director of the Immigration Studies Initiative at UT Austin and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Leal has been widely published in policy journals and has edited and co-edited a dozen scholarly books and journal symposia. He has been an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Japan, and an Associate Member of Nuffield College at Oxford University. In 2021, Leal was recognized by the Latina/o Caucus of the Midwest Political Science Association and received their Distinguished Career Award. He has a Ph.D. and an M.A. in government from Harvard University and a B.A. in political science from Stanford University.