DeanWuBlog

Endowed Professorships

The other day a student asked me whether we should have more endowed professorships and the answer is a resounding “Of course!” We have a single endowed chair, established by the late Walter Gibbs with a bequest, and when it was set up we were able to recruit a nationally renowned constitutional theorist here, Professor Steve Winter; he had previously taught at Miami and Brooklyn. The Gibbs Chair was crucial to the effort to bring someone of Professor Winter’s stature, to the benefit of our intellectual community as well as reputation.

An endowed professorship allows us to recruit and retain the most talented faculty. They are established when a donor gives us a sufficient gift -- $1.5 million for an endowed chair. As with other gifts for an endowment, the corpus is used to sustain the position permanently; the income, which is made from the investments directed by the university’s foundation, are paid to the holder of the honor. For a donor, it is an opportunity to help the institution, receive the recognition of the title (Professor Winter is the Gibbs Professor), and perhaps even influence the curriculum by supporting a specific specialty.

Much as law firms must compete in the marketplace, so too law schools must do everything possible to ensure talented scholars remain productive and committed to staying. Our faculty are talented enough that they are recruited by other schools, a problem that is preferable to the alternative (professors who do not attract the interest of anyone else). In those efforts to attract the superstars of academe, the prestige of a chair is crucial.

There are other honors, which are conceptually similar to an endowed professorship, that we bestow on our professors. The Honorable Avern Cohn, a United States District Judge who has been generous toward the Law School, established the Cohn Family Scholar position, which is held on a rotating basis by different professors. Professor Greg Fox was the inaugural Cohn Family Scholar, for two years; he will deliver a lecture on historical aspects of his area of international law in the winter semester. Friends of the Honorable Damon J. Keith, an LLM alumnus, set up a Visiting Professor position named for him. As I mentioned earlier, we have begun the search process for the first holder of this position, who will teach a course on civil rights.

As with many other aspects of our mission, we have wholehearted agreement from everyone that it would be desirable to increase the number of endowed professorships. It is the duty of the dean to determine how to ensure that such aspirations are realized.