Northwestern Law Dean Steps Down

Reuters: “Northwestern University said its law school dean, Hari Osofsky, will step down from her post this summer to take another role at the university, an unusually short timeline for the departure of a senior academic official.

The change comes at a time when Osofsky and the law school face ongoing discrimination lawsuits and pressure from the Trump administration and conservatives over faculty hiring and the clients the law school’s clinics represent.

In an email to Reuters on Wednesday, Osofsky said her decision to step down was not prompted by those pressures, but by her desire to focus on the rule of law and climate change.

“As we face foundational challenges to our legal system and justice, each of us needs to ask at a personal level what our values and sense of integrity require,” Osofsky wrote.”

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Michigan Law Grad Wins Survivor

Detroit Free-Press: “The latest champion of CBS’s long-running show “Survivor” revealed to his competitors on the season finale Wednesday, May 21, that he is a University of Michigan Law School graduate shortly before they voted to award him $1 million in prize money.

Kyle Fraser, the newest “Survivor” champion, is a former teacher, and then graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 2021.

The 31-year old won the 48th season, which was set in Fiji. The finale aired on May 21. Fraser beat fellow finalists Joe Hunter and Eva Erickson in a 5-2-1 vote.”

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Former Law School Assistant Dean Sentenced to Prison

Above the Law: “Back in 2020, Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law was rocked by a series of admissions scandals. In one of those scandals, Edward Rene, 57, the school’s former assistant dean of admissions, was charged with theft by a public servant, as part of an ill-advised scholarship scheme that netted him about $74,000. As part of that plan, Rene inflated scholarships for two students, and retained the excess funds. Five years have passed, and Rene was recently sentenced not just for felony theft from the school, but also for an unrelated charge of sexual performance by a minor.

Texas Lawyer has the lurid details on the second crime Rene pleaded guilty to last week:

On Jan. 31, 2023, Rene was charged with one count of sexual performance by a child, unrelated to his position at the law school.

Allegedly, on June 7, 2018, Rene, who knew the child was younger than 18 years of age, engaged in “sexual conduct and sexual performance” with “lewd exhibition of the genitals and a digital image that portrayed the complainant engaged in actual and simulated sexual intercourse.” According to the Dec. 21, 2022, charging document.”

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