A
paltry
27
percent
of
eligible
faculty
favored
reappointing
Dean
Lolita
Buckner
Inniss.
Meanwhile,
some
90
percent
of
student
group
leaders
solicited
for
their
thoughts
also
objected
to
her
keeping
the
job.
In
response,
the
University
of
Colorado
Law
School
decided…
to
reappoint
the
dean.
At
this
point,
Colorado
Law
might
just
be
trolling
its
faculty
and
students
for
kicks.
More
faculty
explicitly
voted
against
granting
the
dean
another
run
at
the
post
—
roughly
38
percent
—
while
a
handful
formally
abstained
and
a
quarter
just
refused
to
vote
one
way
or
the
other.
The
ABA
actually
has
a
rule
against
appointing
deans
“over
the
stated
objection
of
a
substantial
majority
of
the
faculty”
without
good
cause.
The
school
hasn’t
gone
into
that.
But
Trump
wants
to
eliminate
the
ABA’s
status
as
the
official
law
school
accreditor
—
presumably
so
he
can
set
up
Trump
University
College
of
Law
if
he
ever
leaves
office.
Maybe
the
school
feels
it
can
get
in
the
administration’s
good
graces
by
breaching
the
ABA’s
accreditation
rules
first!
The
reappointment
confounds
on
a
lot
of
levels.
Back
in
2023,
Colorado
professor
Paul
Campos
sued
the
school
for
discrimination
after
a
curiously
low
evaluation
that
no
one
would
explain.
The
school
settled
in
2024
because
the
dean
responded
to
the
suit
by
removing
Campos
from
a
key
committee
assignment,
leaving
a
paper
trail
of
retaliation
that
was
as
much
“bad
litigation
strategy”
as
Labor
&
Employment
final
exam
hypo.
Since
retaliating
against
employees
rarely
works
out
unless
you
have
six
justices
on
speed
dial
—
the
school
covered
all
of
Campos’s
legal
fees
and
gave
him
a
chunk
of
money
to
end
the
case.
As
Campos
himself
said
of
the
reappointment
in
comments
to
the
local
news,
“If
you
essentially
have
your
institution
admit
you’ve
been
found
liable
for
violating
the
civil
rights
of
one
of
your
tenured
faculty
members,
and
not
only
did
(the
university)
settle
(the
lawsuit)
for
a
significant
amount
of
money
but
you
get
removed
as
that
person’s
immediate
supervisor
…
it’s
kind
of
amazing
someone
would
get
reappointed
under
those
circumstances.”
Hey,
they
reappointed
Alina
Habba
and
there
are
explicit
statutes
against
that,
so
anything’s
possible
in
2025.
But
as
Campos
explains
in
a
post
over
at
Lawyers,
Guns,
Money,
it’s
not
just
a
matter
of
his
personal
legal
issues
with
the
dean’s
tenure.
While
the
dean
claimed
that
diversity
is
her
primary
goal,
faculty
pointed
to
the
school
losing
multiple
non-white
scholars
under
her
leadership.
At
the
same
time,
the
school
is
hiring
like
mad,
pushing
its
faculty-student
ratio
down
to
Yale
&
Stanford
levels
without
finding
a
way
to
bring
in
Yale
&
Stanford
levels
of
money.
The
financial
situation
is
so
bad
that,
despite
the
enormous
subsidy,
equal
to
104%
of
its
self-generated
revenues,
the
law
school
gets
from
central
campus
—
this
in
practice
means
from
all
those
“useless”
humanities
and
social
science
departments,
many
of
which
haven’t
been
allowed
to
make
a
new
full-time
hire
in
years
(the
law
school
made
eight
in
2025)
—
the
law
school
was
unable
to
pay
faculty
and
staff
raises
out
of
its
regular
budget
this
spring,
and
had
to
raid
gift
funds
in
order
to
do
so.
Regental
and
university
rules
don’t
allow
us
not
to
pay
the
regent-approved
raises,
so
as
soon
as
we
can
no
longer
raid
this
particular
piggy
bank
we’ll
have
to
start
laying
people
off,
probably
next
year,
or
at
the
latest
the
year
after
that.
It’s
not
entirely
clear
how
the
university
expects
to
attract
and
retain
talent
while
explicitly
broadcasting
that
dissenting
voices
might
as
well
pack
up
their
desks
in
advance.
But
maybe
that’s
the
point.
If
the
school
finds
itself
on
the
brink
of
layoffs,
it
might
behoove
them
to
push
people
out
the
door.
Still,
is
there
no
one
out
there
clamoring
to
be
a
law
school
dean?
Because
you’d
think
a
search
might
turn
up
someone
willing
to
consider
the
job.
Maybe
even
someone
who
hadn’t
embroiled
a
school
in
a
public
and
damaging
discrimination
case.
Joe
Patrice is
a
senior
editor
at
Above
the
Law
and
co-host
of
Thinking
Like
A
Lawyer.
Feel
free
to email
any
tips,
questions,
or
comments.
Follow
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on Twitter or
Bluesky
if
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Joe
also
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Managing
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