Abstract

Excerpted From: Raquel E. Aldana, Advancing Hispanic-Serving Excellence: Honoring a Dean’s Legacy, 59 University of California in Davis Law Review 3031 (June 2026) (103 Footnotes) (Full Document)

Kevin Johnson served for sixteen years as one of the very few Latino deans at U.S. law schools, and the first to lead a law school in the UC system. His deanship at UC Davis began in 2008 and lasted until he stepped down in 2024, the year UC Davis became a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI).

Despite the long history of U.S. legal education, the number of Latino and Latina deans remains astonishingly small and their tenures far too recent. In 2023, the Hispanic National Bar Association commissioned a study that concluded that only 9 out of 200 U.S. law schools had a Latino or Latina dean. I cannot say definitively that Kevin was the first Latino dean in the mainland United States, though he very well may have been. We do know that the first Latina dean in United States, including Puerto Rico, was Jennifer Rosato Perea, who began her tenure in 2006, followed by Leticia Diaz in 2007, each of them preceding Kevin’s tenure by one to two years.

Our knowledge of Latina deans at U.S. law schools is stronger, built, in part, on our collective oral history. In 2022, I helped found the Graciela Olivárez Latinas in the Legal Academy workshop -- what we call GO LILA -- to trace this history. Graciela Olivárez was the first Latina law professor, appointed in 1972 at the University of New Mexico. That same year, our beloved King Hall colleague, the late Justice Cruz Reynoso, was also hired as law faculty alongside Professor Olivárez as part of a cluster hire of law faculty -- a reminder that this history is not that long ago. Cruz Reynoso would also become the first Latino appointed to the California Supreme Court in 1982. Our GO LILA research revealed that only eight Latinas had ever served as law deans in the entire history of U.S. legal education. In the UC system, only one Latina and one Latino have ever done so -- Rachel Moran at UCLA from 2010-201513 and Kevin Johnson here at UC Davis.

These recent “firsts” are striking but not surprising. Foremost, they reflect the composition of our profession. Across the nation, whereas Latinos comprised twenty percent of the population, only six percent of U.S. lawyers in 2024 were Latino/a/e, representing only a two percent increase in the last decade. And in California -- where Latinos/as/es made up thirty-seven percent of the population in 2023 -- they represent barely six percent of licensed attorneys, although these figures are changing with Latinos making up eleven percent of newly admitted lawyers. As well, the explosive growth of Latino/a/e students at U.S. colleges and universities in recent decades has not translated into significant representation of Latinos/as/es among the leadership ranks in higher education. In the UC System, a 2020 report highlighted that representation of Latina/o/e faculty and staff in senior management positions was barely at 7.9% at a time when half of its campuses were HSIs and another four were emerging HSIs.

Against this backdrop, Kevin’s sixteen-year tenure as dean at a premier Research 1, land-grant, Hispanic Serving university has been transformative -- for King Hall, for UC Davis, for the UC system, and for the nation. In this brief Essay, I will provide a broader context for understanding UC Davis as a HSI and elaborate on three qualities of Kevin Johnson’s leadership that exemplify the best of HSI excellence.

[ . . . ]

Kevin Johnson’s legacy is one of courage, service, and inclusive excellence. He transformed not only our law school but our collective understanding of what leadership in legal education can look like. He also modeled fitting leadership in the context of a premier, land grant, Research 1 HSI institution.

Raquel E. Aldana. Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law.