Announcing the Appointment of the New Dean of the School of Law

January 8, 2025

Dear Colleagues,

Today, I am very pleased to announce that, after a comprehensive national search, Professor and Vice Dean Jerry Dickinson has been named the new dean of the School of Law effective January 15, 2025.

A Pittsburgh native, Jerry has built a national, international, and local reputation as a constitutional law scholar and civil rights lawyer. He has extensive litigation and transactional pro bono experience in civil rights and civil liberties.

In 2017, Jerry joined the Pitt Law faculty and was then appointed as Vice Dean in March 2023. His teaching and scholarship specialize in constitutional law, civil rights and civil liberties, judicial federalism, property, law and democracy, and race and the law. He has been published in the nation’s top law reviews and cited by U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third and Sixth Circuits, amicus briefs filed by Members of Congress in federal courts, and in national and international news outlets.

Before joining the Pitt Law faculty, Jerry practiced at Reed Smith LLP in Pittsburgh, where he founded and coordinated the Housing Rights Project, a pro bono initiative advocating for indigent tenants in eviction proceedings in Allegheny County. He also served as a law clerk for Theodore A. McKee, former Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia.

Jerry is also a former Fulbright Scholar to Johannesburg, South Africa, where he studied comparative constitutional law and housing. There he worked as a human rights activist, representing squatters in eviction proceedings.

Jerry holds a JD from Fordham University, a LL.M. from the University of the Witwatersrand School of Law in Johannesburg, South Africa, and an AB in political science and sociology from the College of the Holy Cross.

I deeply thank Mary Crossley for her exceptional service during her time as interim dean. As many of you know, she served as dean of the School of Law from 2005 to 2012 and she very generously agreed to serve once again in July 2023. Her efforts on behalf of the school have been both highly effective and excellent.

I also thank the search committee—co-chaired by Gene Anderson, the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and College of Business Administration Henry E. Haller Jr. Dean and Carissa Slotterback, Dean of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs—for their diligent efforts throughout the search process.

Please join me in congratulating Jerry on his appointment.

Regards,

Joe

Joseph J. McCarthy
Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor
 
William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Chemical Engineering
University of Pittsburgh