Heather Gerken: Ford-bound after buckling to political pressures during political controversies at Yale Law.
The dean of one of the country’s leading law schools is leaving New Haven for New York to take the helm of one of the nation’s leading charitable foundations.
The dean, Heather Gerken, is stepping down from her post at Yale Law School to run the Ford Foundation, at a time when both law schools and private foundations are grappling with how best to respond to Trump administration policies targeting universities and funding for social services.
Ford announced the move Tuesday morning before Yale Law did, in a release posted on its website.
The release quotes Gerken as stating that she looks “forward to working with Ford staff and the board of trustees to protect democracy and the rule of law and further our mission to create a more just and fair world for everyone.”
Gerken succeeds Darren Walker as Ford’s president.
Gerken was the first female dean in Yale Law’s history. She assumed the post eight years ago. (Read more about her tenure and career here.) Her time at Yale was marked by controversies including the removal of a pro-Palestinian researcher for alleged ties to a charity designated as a terror group and disciplining Professor Amy Chua based on unconfirmed secondhand allegations of inappropriate conduct related to socializing with students at a dinner party; in both cases the law school was accused of violating the scholars’ rights to due process. In both cases Gerken made the swift decisions amid national political pressures: the Trump administration’s efforts to silence pro-Palestinian voices in the former, the “Me Too” moment in the latter.