By the summer of 2023, the Presidents of six of New York City's colleges and universities will be lawyers - Barnard College, Cooper Union, Fordham, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York University, Queens College; with two successful lawyers presidents retiring  from Columbia University and Hunter College.  Dr. Patricia Salkin's new book, May it Please the Campus: Lawyers Leading Higher Education, provides an historical perspective on lawyers occupying the C-Suite in higher education, and she identifies and discusses the exponential increase across of the country of lawyers being selected to lead campuses.  She predicts that by 2030, 10% of the sitting college and university presidents in the current decade will have been lawyers.  Dr. Salkin will be interviewed by Dean Elena Langan, and they will discuss why lawyers have taken a new leadership role in higher education and what it may mean for the future.

Patricia E. Salkin, J.D., Ph.D., is Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost for the Graduate and Professional Divisions at Touro University.  The author of May it Please the Campus: Lawyers Leading Higher Education (Touro University Press, 2022), Salkin has extensively studied the exponential increase in the number of lawyers being selected as college and university presidents and underlying reasons for this leadership shift.  She is the former dean of the Touro University Jacob D. Fuschsberg Law Center, where she remains a member of the faculty and teaches land use and zoning law.  She is the author of more than 100 books, articles, chapters and columns on land use law, government ethics, lawyer licensure reform and higher education leadership.  Prior to joining Touro University in 2012, she was the Raymond & Ella Smith Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School where she also served as Associate Dean and Director of the Government Law Center.

Elena B. Langan, J.D. serves as Dean and Professor of Law at Touro Law Center.  Prior to her appointment at Touro Law, she served as the Dean of Concordia University School of Law in Boise, Idaho and Interim Dean at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad College of Law in Fort Lauderdale Florida, where she also served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Director of the first year lawyering skills and values program.

At Concordia University, Dean Langan served as a member of the student success subcommittee of the President’s Advisory Council and was responsible for: creating, among other things, the 5th & Front Program, described as a place where law and social justice meet in service to the community; engaging in the strategic design and development of innovative JD and non-JD programs; and enhancing the reputation of the law school.