Hunter President, lawyer Jennifer Raab, Set to Depart After More than Two Decades of Service

On December 5, 2022, Jennifer Raab, President of Hunter College, announced that she would be stepping down at the end of the academic years in June 2023. The following day, on December 6th she received the National Institute of Social Sciences Gold Medal of Honor.

A 21-year veteran of the campus C-Suite, in her letter to the Hunter College community Raab refers to the fact that during her tenure there have been five governors and four mayors. As a former government leader (Raab served as Chair of the New York City Landmarks Commission from 1994-2001), it is no surprise that she thought to measure her time in office with a marker to public service. Raab shares prior public service with a majority of the lawyers who have been appointed to campus presidencies.

A 1985 graduate of Harvard Law School, Raab earned an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, and a BA from Cornell University. Prior to serving Hunter College, Raab was a litigator at two highly respected New York City law firms – Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Like a growing number of lawyer presidents, Raab did not have employment experience in higher education prior to her appointment. In reviewing a long list of impressive accomplishments during her tenure, Raab’s lack of prior engagement in higher education did not seem to impact her ability to lead the campus, and in fact her skill set enable the campus to grow and thrive, including having raised $335M in private philanthropic support for the College. In fact, just one month ago Raab announced a $52M gift from philanthropist Leonard Lauder to establish the Evelyn Lauder Community Care Nurse Practitioner Program at the College. Upon learning of her planned departure from Hunter, the Foundation Board Executive Committee described her as having provided unprecedented and transformational leadership.

When Raab was first appointed as the 13th President of Hunter College in 2001, she joined a very small cadre of women lawyer presidents – in fact through all of the 2000s there were only 18. In the 2010s, and today the total number of women lawyer presidents appointed from the 1970s to present totals at 94 (and soon to be 95 when Amy Parsons is officially appointed to lead Colorado State University). For a more in-depth discussion of women lawyer presidents, see Chapter 5 in May it Please the Campus: Lawyers Leading Higher Education (2022).

First African American Lawyer University President John Mercer Langston Appointed in 1873

Civil Rights activist John Mercer Langston (1829-97) was the first African American lawyer to serve as a president of a University. Langston had an interesting life between his political engagement, private law practice, and academia. Between 1848 and the 1860s, Langston was an important organizer and orator in the black civil rights movement in Ohio and across the North, an activist on the underground railroad, and prior to the Civil War he was one of the most prominent African Americans.

In 1873 John Mercer Langston was tapped as Vice President and Acting President of Howard University, after he had organized and established the University’s Law Department in 1869 where he was the first African American appointed to the law faculty, and the first law dean. Although he applied for the presidency in 1875, the trustees dismissed his candidacy which was believed to be on racial grounds, and also due to his non-membership in an evangelical church, so Langston resigned. In 1886 he was named president of the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (now known as Virginia State University), an Historically Black College and University.

His parents were Lucy Jane Langston, and African American slave and Captain Ralph Quarles, a plantation owner who enslaved his mother. Quarles emancipated Lucy in 1806 and John Mercer Langston was born in 1829. He lived with his parents on the plantation until 1834 (when both of his parents died and he inherited part of his father’s estate). He and his brother were then sent to Ohio where they lived with friends of his father (William Gooch) for five years until that family decided to move to Missouri (a slave state) so his brother sued for the Gooch family to relinquish custody in order to protect Langston’s estate. Langston attended privately funded black schools (since he was barred from public schools which were for white students only). In 1840 he moved to Cincinnati where he was exposed to strong antislavery rhetoric in the pre-Civil War North and where he witnessed the violent race riots of 1841 and the restrictive “Black Laws.”

John Mercer Langston graduated from Oberlin College in 1849, and went on to earn a Master’s degree in Theology at Oberlin after he was unable to gain admission to a law school as a black man. Still wanting to be a lawyer, Langston studied law under lawyer Philemon E. Bliss of Elyira and in 1854 he became the first black person to be admitted to the bar in Ohio. A year later, in 1855 he was elected as township clerk near Oberlin, and functioned as the township attorney. He was subsequently elected to the city council and to the Board of Education in Oberlin. He practiced law in Ohio and was an active member of the Republican party. In 1858 at the Cincinnati Colored Convention, Langston was a prominent leader in the debate where, among other things, he advocated for stronger education standards as a way for Blacks to use political capital. In 1864 Langston chaired a committee calling for the abolition of slavery, support for racial unity and self-help, and equality before the law – this agenda was adopted by the black National Convention. This also led to the establishment of the National Equal Rights League, of which Langston was elected President until 1868.

In 1869 Langston left Ohio for Washington, DC where he became the inspector general for the education and abandoned lands for the Feedman’s Bureau. After his time in academia, Langston was elected to Congress in 1888 (serving from 1889 to 1891)making him the first black member of Congress elected from the Commonwealth of Virginia. He practiced law in Washington, DC from 1891 until his death in 1897.

For more information on John Mercer Langston see:

William and Aimee Lee Cheek are the authors of John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829-1865 (University of Illinois Press, 1989).

Lawyer Amy Parsons Named as Sole Finalist for Presidency of Colorado State University Fort Collins

On December 2, 2022 Colorado State University announced that Amy Parsons is the sole finalist for President of CSU Fort Collins. Once the 14-day waiting period concludes, Parsons will become the 126th woman lawyer to be appointed as college or university president and the 25th woman lawyer president appointed in the 2020s. The Board of Governors is expected to formally hire Parsons on December 16, 2022.

Currently the founding CEO of a Denver-based global e-commerce company (Mozzafiato, LLC), Parsons has had a long career (16 years) in higher education at CSU. She is the former executive vice chancellor for the CSU system and previously served as the Vice President for University Operations, and as the Deputy General Counsel and Associate Legal Counsel. Upon graduating from the University of Colorado School of Law (during which time she interned in the CSU general counsel’s office), she worked in private practice as a litigation attorney.

Parsons joins a growing list of former in-house general counsel who are leading campuses. While the list of lawyer presidents seems to be more than doubling each decade in the last three, lawyer are not always accepted as academics by faculties, and the CSU faculty is no exception. While some on the faculty are questioning the lack of academic experience she brings (while noting a lot of experience in higher education it has focused on legal and administrative work, not teaching and scholarship), others point out that it is not the academic credentials that are important, but rather the support of academics that is key.

In an interview, Parsons was asked how her previous roles prepared her for this position, and she answered in part that the University will get, “A seasoned executive who understands how to efficiently and effectively operate the institution, but with an entrepreneurial spirit and perspective to challenge teams to think differently and creatively to solve problems and generate new opportunities. I also am deeply committed to taking care of people because faculty and staff are the ones who make this University what it is, and we must do right by them.” When asked about her leadership style, she used the following words – positive, energized, pays attention to morale, accessible, collaborative, candid and decisive.

Parsons follows another woman lawyer president at CSU, Joyce McConnell, the University’s first female president (whose term ended prior to her five-year agreement), and she joins another current Colorado woman lawyer president, L. Song Richardson at Colorado College who was appointed in 2021.