DEAN CONWAY PARTICIPATED IN A VIRTUAL SYMPOSIUM TITLED “UNEQUAL PROFESSION: RACE AND GENDER IN LEGAL ACADEMIA” AT SOUTHWESTERN LAW SCHOOL

Dean Danielle M. ConwayOctober 2021 — Dean Danielle Conway presented on a panel that honored Professor Meera Deo and her recent book titled, “Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia.” The symposium was hosted by Southwestern Law Review at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, CA.

Dean Conway wrote an essay titled, “A Black Woman Dean Speaks About the Precarity of Leadership,” which she discussed as a Symposium panelist. A thread in the essay discusses this most recent era of racial reckoning during which we are confronting law and the legal academy’s complicity in scaffolding systemic inequity around what should be strong democratic structures.


Danielle M. Conway is the Dean and Donald J. Farage Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson Law. A leading expert in procurement law, entrepreneurship, and intellectual property law, Dean Conway joined Dickinson Law after serving for four years as dean of the University of Maine School of Law and 14 years on the faculty of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, William S. Richardson School of Law, where she was the inaugural Michael J. Marks Distinguished Professor of Business Law. Prior to her deanships, Conway was a member of the faculties at the Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law. She also served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Australia and later as Chair in Law at LaTrobe University, Faculty of Law & Management. Dean Conway is the author or editor of six books and casebooks as well as numerous book chapters, articles, and essays. Her scholarly agenda and speeches have focused on, among other areas, advocating for public education and for actualizing the rights of marginalized groups, including Indigenous Peoples, minoritized people, and members of rural communities. Dean Conway is the co-recipient of the inaugural Association of American Law Schools’ Impact Award, which honors individuals who have had a significant positive impact on legal education or the legal profession. Dean Conway was recognized for her work in establishing the Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project. Launched in June 2020, the project is a webpage for law deans, faculty, and the public that contains resources and information related to addressing racism in law and legal education. In 2016, Dean Conway retired from the U.S. Army in the rank of lieutenant colonel after 27 years of combined active, reserve, and national guard service.