Selected Commentary

• Publication year: 2008
• Citation: Vol. 31 No. 04

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND LAW REVIEWVolume 31, No. 4SUMMER 2008

Selected Commentary

Session 1: Deciding To Become a Dean

Kevin R. Johnson(fn*)

Because I am not a dean or former dean and quite possibly may never be one, I feel somewhat out of place on this panel.

Although I have not been a dean, I have been an associate dean for ten years and have long watched a master dean at work. I also generally know something of the intricacies of the dean selection process, having been through various stages of a number of dean searches as either a participant or an observer. Based on that experience, I want to present you with a handful of questions that may help you decide whether to apply for a law school deanship.

First, why become a dean? This is the million-dollar question. It is a critically important question to ask yourself. To adequately answer that question, you must ask some related ones: What are the rewards and challenges of deaning? When is the right time-professionally and personally-for me to be a dean? These are as much personal as professional queries.

Consider the many duties of the modern law school dean. A law school dean today is a leader (intellectual and otherwise), administrator, fund-raiser, mentor, diplomat, problem-solver, member of the faculty, and much, much more. I think that many faculty members would be shocked at the range of problems that regularly land on the dean's desk. As an associate dean, I have dealt with an incredibly diverse array of issues, from tenure applications to janitorial trash collection, from teaching course assignments to personality disputes among student editors of the law review. Deans get to deal with an even more diverse and complex set of problems.

Moreover, as Rennard Strickland(fn1) said, it is critically important that we see greater diversity in the deanships across the country. I am deeply committed to that end. Deans have incredible discretion and can do a large amount of good, but they also can do some bad. Several minority deans have stepped down in recent years and we need good people to fill their shoes. At the same time, the dean selection process is something akin to a scary roller coaster ride, definitely not for the faint of heart.

Dean searches are always long and arduous, especially for the candidates. They are, in many respects, the equivalent of a marathon, a true test of endurance. An awful lot happens very quickly. It is an amazingly intense experience, with many stories to tell after the search is complete. Like a marathon, one should not enter a dean search without an extensive amount of preparation.

First and foremost, the dean selection process is an extremely political process. Interviews are as much like a political campaign as anything else. A dean interview most definitely is not like interviewing for any other kind of academic job or, for that matter, any other job that I have ever had. That perhaps is to be expected. There are a great many more skills required to be a good dean (not the best job in the world) than a good faculty member (the best job in the world).

To complicate the politics of the dean selection process, each constituency in a law school has a different fear about a new dean and thus looks for something different in the dean candidates...