Editor’s note: Dwight A. McBride, Emory University provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, shared the following announcement with the Emory community on Sept. 10.

To the Emory Community:

I am pleased to announce the Search Advisory Committee and the official launch of the search process for the next dean of Emory University School of Law.

There are many critical decisions to be made in the coming academic year concerning Emory's future direction, and chief among those is this selection of the next dean of Emory Law. As I begin my second year as Emory's provost, I can appreciate how profoundly important this transition is both for Emory and for Emory Law, and I am dedicated to being thoughtfully engaged in my approach to identifying the next dean of our law school.

Search process

The process leading to this selection is underway and I have named a search advisory committee that will be ably led by Erika James, who is the John H. Harland Dean of the Goizueta Business School and professor of organization and management. Dean James has my utmost trust and confidence as an exemplary and thoughtful academic leader. I cannot thank her enough for agreeing to lead this critically important committee on behalf of the university.

The Search Advisory Committee, listed below, includes Emory faculty, students, staff, and alumni. In addition, we have selected John Thornburgh and Werner Boel, LLM of Witt/Kieffer as search consultants. John and Werner are both highly regarded as experts in higher education leadership placement and we look forward to working closely with them.

Members of the Search Advisory Committee

Erika James | Committee Chair
John H. Harland Dean of the Goizueta Business School
Professor of Organization & Management

Margo A. Bagley 96L
Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law
Emory Law

Laurie R. Blank
Clinical Professor of Law
Director, International Humanitarian Law Clinic
Emory Law

Nicole Elmurr 19L
President, Student Bar Association
Emory Law

Isabel Garcia 99L
Partner at Piedmont Law Group of Garcia & Benkert LLC

Andra Gillespie
Associate Professor of Political Science
Director, James Weldon Johnson Institute
Emory College of Arts and Sciences

Jonathan K. Layne 79B 79L
Partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
Emory Trustee

Michael J. Perry
Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law
Emory Law

Rafael I. Pardo
Robert T. Thompson Professor of Law
Emory Law

Ethan Rosenzweig 02L
Associate Dean, Enrollment Management and Student Services
Emory Law

Teemu Ruskola
Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law
Emory Law

Stephen D. Sencer
Senior Vice President and General Counsel
Emory University

Liza Vertinsky
Associate Professor of Law
Emory Law

Advisers to Search Advisory Committee

Peter Barnes
Vice President for Human Resources

Theresa Milazzo
Associate Vice President, Human Resources

Internal Search Consultant

Mearah Quinn-Brauner
Assistant Vice Provost & Deputy Chief of Staff for the Office of the Provost

Committee Search Administrator

Lynn Magee
Employee Operations Manager, Office of the Provost

Community engagement

Emory community input will be critical to making this search successful. The search firm consultants, in tandem with the Search Advisory Committee, will arrange for town halls and other venues to hear from members of the Emory Law community and beyond about what you see as the most important attributes for the next dean of Emory Law. Dates and locations will be made available soon. We hope that you will attend and be part of the process.

Please visit the Office of the Provost website for more information and to follow the progress of the search.

Finally, I want to thank Interim Dean of Emory Law James B. Hughes Jr. for his service to the Emory community. His leadership of Emory Law at this crucial time has helped us to lay the groundwork for a thoughtful, strategic search for the school's next dean.

I look forward to working with you on this search for our next dean of Emory Law, and to helping strengthen its standing as one of the nation's premier law schools.

With warm regards,

Dwight A. McBride, PhD
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs