My Move to Yale Law School

After spending more than two decades in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, I'm pleased to announce that I will joining the faculty of Yale Law School in the fall of 2024. At YLS, I also expect to be the faculty director of a new center focused on academic freedom and free speech issues.

I've been extremely fortunate to have been at Princeton, and I leave with nothing but good feelings and best wishes for my students and colleagues there. It is time to take on some new challenges, however, and I very much look forward to joining a new set of students and colleagues at Yale.

Yale Law School has an unparalleled role in shaping the legal academia and influencing policymakers, and I'm looking forward to finding my own niche there.

I'm not unmindful of the significance of this move at the present moment. YLS has, of course, had its own recent controversies regarding free speech and ideological diversity. Yale has notoriously been lacking in right-of-center public law faculty for decades. Co-blogger Josh Blackman says YLS is a failed academic institution. I hope not! But the lack of political diversity on elite law school faculties is unhealthy, and I'm glad to be able to do my small part to mix things up. Law students and law schools need to be able to understand and engage productively with a conservative federal judiciary. With the very meaning of the conservatism in the United States up for grabs, I look forward to lending what perspective and expertise I can to public debates.

I'm grateful to Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken for her efforts in making this happen, and to the faculty at YLS for their welcome. The next couple of decades should be interesting. More to come in due course.