Appointment of my colleague Kevin R. Johnson (right) as the incoming Dean of the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall) became official yesterday, by vote of the university's regents. Expert in immigration and refugee law (he's a cofounder of ImmigrationProf Blog), critical race theory, and civil rights law, Kevin, our Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicana/o Studies, will be the 1st Latino to head a UC law school. His book How Did You Get to Be Mexican? A White/Brown Man's Search for Identity (1999) was nominated for a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.Earlier this month Makau Mutua (below left), with whom I've been proud to serve on the Executive Committee and Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, was named Dean of the University at Buffalo Law School, where he's been interim dean this past semester. SUNY Distinguished Professor and Floyd
H. and Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar, Makau is director of the Buffalo Human Rights Center, having previously served as Associate Director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School. Expert in international human rights, international business transactions, and international law, his most recent book is Kenya’s Quest for Democracy: Taming Leviathan (2008). While on sabbatical in his native Kenya, Makau was appointed to chair that country's Task Force on the Establishment of a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission.Kevin and Makau join swelling ranks of (Int)Law Deans: those we've mentioned, like Janet Koven Levit (Tulsa), Nora V. Demleitner (Hofstra), and David Wippmann (Minnesota), and others whom we've not yet had a chance to mention, like Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker (Pacific McGeorge), Hiram Chodosh (Utah), Harold Hongju Koh (Yale), and T. Alexander Aleinikoff (Georgetown).
Have we forgotten anyone?
