Guess Who’s Coming To Graduation?

Gillian Lester

Interview with Columbia Law’s Incoming Dean Gillian Lester

Talk about a changing of the guard!
After a wildly successful stint as Columbia Law’s dean for a decade, David Schizer stepped down in April, replaced by Berkeley Law acting dean Gillian Lester. Transitions can be a strange time in educational institutions. On one hand, administrators, faculty, and students can reflect on the past, softly smiling as they realize just how far they’ve come. With a new dean arriving, they must also examine where they ultimately want to go… and just how far they are from achieving those ends.
Last week, Lester sat down with the Columbia Spectator to discuss her vision as dean.  The job requires Lester to uproot her life, moving from California to New York with her husband (Berkeley Law professor Eric Talley) and two children. Taking the job at Columbia Law was a bold move from her. And Columbia Law can expect courage to define her leadership style, as she credits “bold ideas” as one means to overcome institutional challenges.
What else can Columbia Law expect from Lester? Start with greater collaboration between the law school and other schools within Columbia University. These cross-curricular partnerships were a hallmark of the University of California-Berkeley as a whole and they are, in Lester’s mind, a foundation of the school’s success. “We will only become better in the Law School by taking advantages of the riches of the campus, and the campus will only become better by being in conversations with people in the Law School,” Lester points out.
Rebecca Schonberg, a Berkeley Law grad who once served as Lester’s research assistant, also expects Lester to be flexible and accessible as a dean: “She doesn’t have up a lot of barriers. As a professor, I think she is very direct and open with students. I think it’s a very open classroom environment to talk about issues from a lot of different sides. She is interested in hearing a lot of different perspectives.”
Schonberg also believes that Lester will stress a practical approach to the law: “[Lester] is really interested in how laws and policies shape people’s lives and how people think about issues, and, of course, how people’s thinking informs legal policy decisions that are made.”
Lester herself is especially excited to build on Dean Schizer’s accomplishments. “I think that the best way for me to honor his legacy is to maintain the momentum he set as I take the Law School into the next era,” she says. “I think the school is in great shape.”
Source: Columbia Spectator