Dear Alumni and Friends,
Since joining Columbia in August of 2024, I have had the pleasure of meeting with and hearing from members of the Law School community, including alumni and friends around the globe. These conversations have inspired and energized me, reinforcing my belief that this is an extraordinary moment of opportunity for the Law School to build on our long-established tradition of excellence and foundational academic values, and continue to flourish as a leader in legal education for years to come.
This annual report, which acknowledges gifts made during the 2023–2024 fiscal year (July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024), showcases many of the accomplishments made possible by your support. Thanks to donors like you, we raised nearly $45 million. Your continued loyalty is an exceptional vote of confidence in our students and faculty, and in our ambitions for the future.
Since joining Columbia in August of 2024, I have had the pleasure of meeting with and hearing from members of the Law School community, including alumni and friends around the globe. These conversations have inspired and energized me, reinforcing my belief that this is an extraordinary moment of opportunity for the Law School to build on our long-established tradition of excellence and foundational academic values, and continue to flourish as a leader in legal education for years to come.
This annual report, which acknowledges gifts made during the 2023–2024 fiscal year (July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024), showcases many of the accomplishments made possible by your support. Thanks to donors like you, we raised nearly $45 million. Your continued loyalty is an exceptional vote of confidence in our students and faculty, and in our ambitions for the future.
Gifts to the Law School are inspired by as many reasons as there are donors. Some recent examples of your extraordinary support include a $5 million commitment from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation to honor my esteemed predecessor by establishing the Gillian Lester Fund for Student Financial Aid and by expanding the Greene Public Service Scholars program; a $5 million commitment to create the Grace Rodriguez ’86 Scholars Program—endowed by Rodriguez’s husband, John J. Sullivan ’85, and her family—which honors the memory of Rodriguez and provides a three-year, full-tuition scholarship to one incoming student every year; and a $5 million pledge from Annette L. Nazareth ’81 and Roger W. Ferguson Jr. to support the renovation of the Law Library.
We are deeply grateful for your participation in events and programs that brought Law School alumni together throughout the past year. In October 2023, we launched the Women of Columbia Law initiative with a daylong event that spotlighted the progress and promise of our alumnae; the program featured discussions on timely issues—advancing gender equality, achieving professional goals, breaking paradigms in the legal profession—along with networking opportunities. In March 2024, Women of Columbia Law hit the road for an event in Beverly Hills, California.
Back in New York, alumni gathered during the spring semester for annual events such as the Donors and Scholars Luncheon and the Alumni of Color Talk and Reception, where the keynote speaker was U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian ’04, the first judge of South Asian descent to serve on the bench in the Southern District of New York. And more than 350 members of the Columbia Law community attended the annual Winter Luncheon, where the Medal for Excellence was awarded to Rolando T. Acosta CC ’79, LAW ’82 and Alia Tutor ’00.
In May, the Law School marked the graduation of more than 800 J.D., LL.M., E.LL.M., and J.S.D. degree candidates at a Class Day ceremony featuring a keynote address from Kristen Clarke ’00, U.S. Assistant Attorney General and head of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Columbia Law classes celebrating their reunion milestones are always eager to reengage with their classmates and use the occasion to make significant gifts in support of faculty recruitment and scholarship, student financial aid, capital projects, cocurricular programs, and a host of other initiatives and priorities. At Reunion 2024, nearly 1,000 alumni from 49 countries gathered in New York City to reminisce, reconnect, and raise more than $15 million.
We also kicked off the long-awaited Law Library renovation project, which will completely reimagine approximately 50,000 square feet of Jerome L. Greene Hall and create a beautiful new landmark for Columbia Law School. It’s becoming easier to envision the many benefits the space will offer to our students, including an open and expansive design and a significant increase in the number of study seats and reservable meeting rooms. Construction will continue throughout the 2024–2025 academic year, and the new Law Library is projected to open in fall 2025.
The Law School also welcomed several new faces (besides mine!) over the past year, including three extraordinary additions to the faculty: Dennis Fan ’15, an accomplished former state and federal appellate litigator, joined us in July 2024 and is creating our new Appellate Litigation Clinic; Clare Huntington ’96, a leading expert on family law and poverty law, and Dorothy S. Lund, a cutting-edge corporate law scholar, both joined us in July 2023.
Among my first steps as dean was to welcome our incoming J.D. and LL.M. classes this fall. Members of the J.D. Class of 2027 hail from 34 states as well as the District of Columbia and 22 countries outside of the U.S., and they speak or read dozens of languages. Members of the LL.M. Class of 2025 represent 63 countries and include 13 Fulbright Scholars.
As we look to a bright future together, I must acknowledge how challenging the previous year has been for our community. As Dean, one of my responsibilities is to help ensure that the Law School remains a place where all members of our community are able to express their views in an intellectual environment of respect and civility. The path forward requires a collective commitment to free expression and open discourse, and a willingness to, in the words of our Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59, “disagree without being disagreeable.”
I am honored to lead the Law School at this moment in its history, and I am incredibly excited by the excellence and tremendous potential that our faculty, students, staff, and alumni represent. Thank you for your deep commitment to and belief in Columbia Law School.
Best regards,
Daniel Abebe
Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law