Penelope Andrews, president of Albany Law School of Union University, moved into legal academia in the mid-1980s because of both identity and circumstance: She was a black woman from South Africa, at Columbia Law on a student visa and completing her degree during the height of apartheid.

“The South African government had declared a state of emergency,” Andrews said in a telephone interview. “Despite a job offer, I couldn’t get a green card and I feared that I’d be arrested if I returned home. Happily, a Columbia law professor suggested I teach in a law school somewhere in the British Commonwealth.” Continue reading →

If there is one subject in which Patricia Salkin is fluent – even more, perhaps, than the land use laws on which she is an expert and the intersection of law and governmental affairs where her experience is longstanding – it’s the lives and life stories of her students at the Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center.

And if there is one thing that infuriates and energizes Salkin, the dean, it’s that the data used to recommend a law school (or not) don’t reflect the true quality of the education her students receive and the opportunities available to them. Continue reading →

The story of Douglas J. Sylvester, dean of Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, comprises brinksmanship, gratefulness and the road nearly missed, but not for lack of trying. Continue reading →