Noted Scholar of Inequality to Lead BU School of Law

Angela Onwuachi-Willig drawn by BU’s history of access and diversity.

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, a renowned legal scholar and expert in racial and gender inequality as well as civil rights law, has been named dean of the BU School of Law. A prolific writer and authority on employment discrimination and law as it relates to social injustice, she comes to BU from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she is the Chancellor’s Professor of Law.

“We are delighted to have recruited Angela Onwuachi-Willig to Boston University as the next dean of the BU School of Law,” says Jean Morrison, BU provost and chief academic officer. “She has an excellent record of accomplishment as a scholar and teacher, and as dean, Dr. Onwuachi-Willig will continue the advancement of the quality and stature of the BU School of Law.”

Morrison says Onwuachi-Willig, who has published extensively in leading law journals, including the Yale Law Review, California Law Review, and the Georgetown Law Journal, is a high-impact academic. Prior to her post at Berkeley, she was the Charles and Marion J. Kierscht Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law, as well as a finalist for the Iowa Supreme Court.

Onwuachi-Willig says she made the decision to leave top-ranked UC, Berkeley, School of Law to take the LAW deanship because of the University’s commitment to the causes and ideals that she cares deeply about.

“I was initially drawn to BU Law because of its outstanding academic reputation and its amazing community of students, staff, and faculty. The faculty at the law school are stellar. They are highly productive. They write first-rate legal scholarship, and they are as committed to being excellent teachers and mentors for their students as they are to being great legal scholars. The students are also very impressive. They are smart and ambitious. They care not only about being excellent lawyers but also about being excellent citizens in their communities.

“Frankly, the more I learned about the school, the more I was attracted to it. I was particularly touched by and drawn to BU Law’s history of access and diversity. The fact that its doors have been open to all since its founding is incredibly meaningful to me as an African American woman. The law school’s body of alumni—in fact, the University’s body of alumni, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59)—are incredibly impressive. When I discovered that Barbara Jordan (LAW’59, Hon.’69) was an alumna of the law school, it felt like a sign. I was born and raised in Houston, Tex., and I grew up with Barbara Jordan as one of my idols.”