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Law professors as university presidents

Brian Leiter

This is just off the top of my head, but it seems like a lot:  Kent Syverud at Syracuse University; Michael Fitts at Tulane University; Joel Seligman at University of Rochester; John Sexton at New York University; Lee Bollinger at Columbia University; Bill Powers at the University of Texas at Austin; Frederick Lawrence at Brandeis University; Nicholas Zeppos at Vanderbilt University; David Leebron at Rice University; Ronald Daniels at Johns Hopkins University. Other current ones?

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26 responses to “Law professors as university presidents”

  1. Rafael Pardo

    Michael Young at the University of Washington

    Reply
  2. Rob T.

    Stuart Rabinowitz at Hofstra.

    Reply
  3. Robert Strassfeld

    Hiram Chodosh, Claremont McKenna

    Reply
  4. Alfred Brophy

    Taylor Revely at William and Mary.

    Reply
  5. David M. Cole

    Kevin Worthen at BYU (former dean at the law school)

    Reply
  6. Matt

    It’s not technically a university, but Reed College now has it’s 2nd former law professor as president, with John Kroger http://www.reed.edu/president/ having taken over from Colin Diver (former Penn Law dean and professor). (It seems that Kroger has been in government service for a few years, but he was a law professor at Lewis and Clark before that.)

    Reply
  7. Chris Griffin

    Taylor Reveley was dean at William & Mary before becoming president.

    Reply
  8. Michael Moreland

    Also Chris Eisgruber at Princeton, Tom Mengler at St. Mary’s (Texas), and John Garvey at Catholic University.

    Reply
  9. Brian Bix

    E. Thomas Sullivan, University of Vermont
    http://www.uvm.edu/~presdent/?Page=sullivanbio.html

    Reply
  10. dan rodriguez

    David Van Zandt is president of The New School in New York City.

    Reply
  11. Jen Kreder

    Jeff Mearns at Northern Kentucky University.

    Reply
  12. Haskell Murray

    Jere Morehead at University of Georgia, though he previously taught legal studies in the business school, not the law school.

    Reply
  13. Kelvin Yang

    Mark Nordenberg, University of Pittsburgh (he’s retiring in August after almost 20 years as Chancellor).

    Reply
  14. Thomas Gallanis

    Barbara Snyder at Case Western Reserve University.

    Reply
  15. Ian Holloway

    John Garvey – Catholic University.

    Reply
  16. Anita Bernstein

    There’s also Stephen Friedman at Pace. The interesting specimens are the ones who run universities with no law school: Van Zandt, Sullivan, Syverud, Seligman, Leebron, Daniels. Most of them don’t have Ph.D.s, I believe.

    Reply
  17. Michael Fischl

    The late & beloved Victor Rosenblum of Northwestern Law also served as president of Reed College, back in the late 1960s. http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2006/03/rosenblum.html

    Reply
  18. Kevin O’Connor

    George R. Johnson Jr at Elon. There are probably a lot more law professors who would like to be.

    Reply
  19. Ellen Wertheimer

    Has anyone else noticed that there seems to be only one woman on this extensive list, including the additions in the comments? Of course, I might have missed someone, but still the gender imbalance seems extreme and indefensible.
    BL COMMENT: Maybe womenwho go into law teaching have more sense than to become university presidents?

    Reply
  20. hannah arterian

    I believe on good authority that:
    1.Syracuse University does have a College of Law (re Syverud).
    2. Van Zandt does have a Ph.D .
    3. Most of those listed were law school deans at some point or other.

    Reply
  21. John Weaver

    Gordon Gee, now back at West Virginia, is the president of more universities than anyone. Again, only a college, but Tom Galligan at Colby-Sawyer

    Reply
  22. David Yellen

    Steve Bahls (former dean at Capital) is President at Augustana (IL). Phoebe Haddon (outgoing dean at Maryland) is becoming Chancellor at Rutgers-Camden.

    Reply
  23. Keith Rowley

    Kenneth Starr (former dean and professor at Pepperdine, among other positions) has been president of Baylor University for several years.

    Reply
  24. Joan Heminway

    Again, not a university president, but a college president: Thomas C. Galligan, Jr., former Dean at The University of Tennessee College of Law, at Colby-Sawyer College.

    Reply
  25. Anita Bernstein

    Hannah, I apologize for my error. No excuse, I did know and mistyped. Glad to have an otherwise accurate list.
    Ellen, I also noticed and didn’t think the reason is that women know better. Perhaps “the glass cliff” will let women head universities in the future. The same phenomenon that opened the U.S. presidency to a black man only after foreign relations and the economy had been mauled, and gave female pioneers jobs like CEO of General Motors and evening news anchor on network television.

    Reply
  26. Art

    How about the late Williams Greiner. He was a law professor, then became Provost, then President at SUNY-Buffalo.

    Reply

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