A Quick Update On Yale Law School
Will Heather Gerken be reappointed as dean of YLS?
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The last episode of The Dean, a riveting television series based on the abundant drama at Yale Law School, ended with a cliffhanger: would the embattled dean, Heather Gerken, win reappointment? Or would critics of how she handled various scandals at YLS block her renewal?
As I previously reported, the Yale Law faculty met last Wednesday, December 8, to discuss renewing Dean Gerken. More specifically, they met to discuss the recommendation of the Dean Review Advisory Committee that she be reappointed for another five-year term. (Please note the correction appended to my earlier story: there’s no formal, up-or-down, roll-call vote of all faculty, just a discussion resulting in a consensus.)
There haven’t been many leaks about what happened at the meeting, so I haven’t heard much in terms of details. But I did hear the bottom line of the meeting, and it’s not surprising: as I have predicted on multiple occasions, the consensus of the faculty is to support the recommendation of the Dean Review Advisory Committee to give Dean Gerken another five-year term.1
This is the faculty’s “final answer,” since there are no further faculty meetings planned to discuss Dean Gerken’s reappointment, meaning that the renewal decision is now in the hands of Yale's president, Peter Salovey. President Salovey is not quite a rubber stamp—and this year, given all the high-profile controversies at YLS, he may take a closer look at the situation than usual—but it would be a shock if he rejects the recommendation and nixes Dean Gerken’s reappointment.
When will we receive official word? With Yale’s winter recess coming up, it’s unlikely to be before the end of the year. Instead, look for an announcement from President Salovey’s office sometime in January.
The announcement of a dean’s reappointment is usually marked by a celebration of a dean’s major accomplishments to date. In Dean Gerken’s case, expect to hear about her shepherding YLS through the pandemic, achieving record-setting diversity in the student body,2 launching the Tsai Leadership Program, expanding already robust clinical programs,3 and exceeding fundraising goals. But there have been smaller successes as well, including the launch of a Safety Net Support Fund that helps students deal with unexpected or emergency expenses (of which there have been many during the pandemic).
Regardless of your views on all the recent controversies—and I certainly wasn’t shy about expressing my concerns—barring something unforeseen, Dean Gerken will remain in office as the dean of Yale Law School. So to my fellow YLS alumni, as well as students, faculty, and administrators, I say: let’s support Dean Gerken in making Yale Law School the very best law school it can be.
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I also heard (ironically enough) that some professors complained at the meeting about colleagues leaking confidential faculty deliberations.
This diversity goes beyond just racial and ethnic diversity. If you look at the profile of the class of 2024, i.e., the current first-year law students, you’ll see that 28 percent are first-generation professionals, 17 percent are first-generation college students, and six percent are veterans. Veteran enrollment has been boosted by Yale Law’s expansion of its Yellow Ribbon Program, which provides robust financial aid to veterans who enroll at YLS.
Yale is generally known as a theory-focused rather than practice-oriented law school, to put it mildly. As Dean Gerken acknowledged in a 2019 Harvard Law Review piece: “You’ve heard the jokes. ‘Anything X School can do, Yale can do meta.’ ‘The only course taught at Yale is Law and Me.’ And trust me, you don’t want to know how many Yale grads it takes to change a lightbulb.”
But in that same HLR article, Gerken rejected “the tired theory/practice divide” and argued for a broad view of both lawyering and legal education—in which clinics play an essential part, which is why she has focused so much on strengthening and expanding them.