Or, at Kentucky Law, a cockroach nest<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to the Louisville Courier Journal<\/a>, weeks before that March 6 announcement, UK law faculty told university officials that a \u201csubstantial majority\u201d of them found Van Tatenhove \u201cunacceptable\u201d:<\/p>\n In a February email obtained by The Courier Journal, UK law school associate deans Joshua Douglas and Beau Steenken told law faculty they had sent an email to DiPaola and others involved in the dean search informing them that a \u201csubstantial majority of the faculty expressed that Candidate D does not meet the standards of the candidate profile\u201d the university put forward.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Candidate D, obviously, was Judge Van Tatenhove. The other three finalists \u2014 Michael Higdon, Mary Graw Leary, and Milena Sterio \u2014 were all conventional academic picks and rated as acceptable to the faculty. The university disregarded the faculty pick and announced Option D anyway.<\/p>\n Did we mention that the judge served as a legislative aide to Mitch McConnell and chief of staff to GOP Rep. Ron Lewis? Well, he did. From the university\u2019s perspective, a politically connected former judge could be a boon to fundraising. From the faculty\u2019s perspective, during an active Republican-led assault on academia<\/a>, a Republican dean reads a lot like a white flag. <\/p>\n This controversy has now roped in Kentucky\u2019s governor, who publicly inquired about the University of Kentucky\u2019s decision-making<\/a> citing the judge\u2019s appointment and the elevation of the school\u2019s athletic director to a vague \u201cexecutive in residence\u201d role earning $950,000 a year through 2030. <\/p>\n The selection matters for the school\u2019s accreditation because ABA Interpretation 203-1<\/a> notes: \u201cExcept in circumstances demonstrating good cause, a dean should not be appointed or reappointed to a new term over the stated objection of a substantial majority of the faculty.\u201d There\u2019s also an accreditation standard requiring the dean to hold tenure \u201cexcept in extraordinary circumstances,\u201d which should be unavailable to the judge, as he lacks the necessary scholarly qualifications. Provost Robert DiPaola, who ran the search, decided to roll past both of those standards. Faculty member Ramsi Woodcock flagged the problem to the UK president and wrote an op-ed in the Courier Journal<\/a> making these procedural arguments.<\/p>\n But, according to the email, a \u201csubstantial majority\u201d of the faculty \u201cexpressed\u201d that Judge Van Tatenhove \u201cdoes not meet\u201d the job requirements\u00a0advertised<\/a>\u00a0by the university because he lacks \u201cexperience arising from a senior-level administrative role such as department chair, center director, associate dean, or dean.\u201d<\/p>\n The email also stated that Van Tatenhove \u201cdoes not possess the necessary qualifications (including a record of scholarship) to be granted tenure under the Rosenberg College of Law\u2019s current rules.\u201d Van Tatenhove\u2019s only academic publication appears to be a\u00a0note<\/a>\u00a0he penned as a law student forty years ago. The ABA\u00a0requires<\/a>\u00a0that a dean be a tenured law professor.<\/p>\n At any school interested in protecting its accreditation, that would have been the end of Van Tatenhove\u2019s candidacy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But Judge Van Tatenhove doesn\u2019t have the scholarly record because he\u2019s spent the last two decades as a federal judge. I don\u2019t know as though there are established canons of construction for interpreting ABA accreditation rules, but a standard probably should not be read to prevent a school from appointing a federal judge. <\/p>\n That said, the school couldn\u2019t leave well enough alone and extended this defense of Judge Van Tatenhove to an absurdist end. A Kentucky spokesperson argued that Van Tatenhove\u2019s judicial record is, a kind of scholarship in itself<\/em>, because \u201chundreds of his judicial opinions have been effectively peer-reviewed by the Sixth Circuit with an affirmation rate above 80%.\u201d Insert a head-smack emoji here. The \u201cSixth Circuit as peer review\u201d claim, makes you worry that they maybe they don\u2019t<\/em> understand how scholarship works.<\/p>\n Also, as a soon-to-be-former Kentucky professor notes of Dean Davis<\/a>, \u201cthe last permanent dean of the law school has not published any legal scholarship in decades.\u201d It\u2019s hard to hang a hat on a standard that the faculty hasn\u2019t worried about for years.<\/p>\n The ABA\u2019s accreditation body declined to comment on a specific school<\/a>, as the ABA\u2019s accreditation body always does.<\/p>\n This afternoon, Above the Law<\/em> has learned, the provost has called an emergency meeting. Presumably, the goal is to convince everyone to stop taking this fight to the Courier Journal.<\/p>\n Judge Van Tatenhove seems more than qualified to run a law school. But even if faculty shouldn\u2019t be able to unilaterally pick their boss, they should be able to nix one. That\u2019s a balance that the ABA standard gets right \u2014 a substantial majority just needs to not actively reject the choice. That\u2019s a low bar, and Kentucky couldn\u2019t clear it. <\/p>\n A law school can\u2019t function if the majority of the faculty doesn\u2019t have confidence in the dean. Maybe Judge Van Tatenhove is prepared to stand up to the anti-intellectual broadside his fellow Republicans have launched, but the faculty has ample reason to prefer \u2014 at this moment in history \u2014 a candidate from within the legal academy. The board of trustees meets April 24 to formally confirm the appointment. <\/p>\n As long as he\u2019s got a plan for the cockroaches, he\u2019ll be fine.<\/p>\n Earlier<\/strong>: Federal Judge Steps Up To Be Law School Dean<\/a><\/p>\n The post Kentucky Law School\u2019s Dean Fight Is A Dumpster Fire<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n Law school deans have a weird job description. Technically, they lead the law school in its academic mission. But, more realistically, they fundraise, game the U.S. News rankings, and manage the law school bureaucracy. Ideally, they keep the alumni happy at football games \u2014 or basketball games depending on the school in question. A unicorn dean also serves as a leading intellectual light carrying the program\u2019s scholarly banner, but\u2026 all else equal, the university will prefer someone who knows how to get that local car dealer from the class of \u201972 to slap their name on a new building.<\/p>\n When Kentucky Law announced that Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove of the Eastern District of Kentucky would assume the deanship<\/a>, it seemed like the school had finally gotten its ducks in a row. After all, the school hasn\u2019t had permanent dean since Mary J. Davis stepped back from the role back in 2024<\/a>, and a pair of previous dean searches failed to find anyone. Stability appeared to be on the horizon. But underneath the surface, the announcement kicked a hornet\u2019s nest.<\/p>\n Or, at Kentucky Law, a cockroach nest<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to the Louisville Courier Journal<\/a>, weeks before that March 6 announcement, UK law faculty told university officials that a \u201csubstantial majority\u201d of them found Van Tatenhove \u201cunacceptable\u201d:<\/p>\n In a February email obtained by The Courier Journal, UK law school associate deans Joshua Douglas and Beau Steenken told law faculty they had sent an email to DiPaola and others involved in the dean search informing them that a \u201csubstantial majority of the faculty expressed that Candidate D does not meet the standards of the candidate profile\u201d the university put forward.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Candidate D, obviously, was Judge Van Tatenhove. The other three finalists \u2014 Michael Higdon, Mary Graw Leary, and Milena Sterio \u2014 were all conventional academic picks and rated as acceptable to the faculty. The university disregarded the faculty pick and announced Option D anyway.<\/p>\n Did we mention that the judge served as a legislative aide to Mitch McConnell and chief of staff to GOP Rep. Ron Lewis? Well, he did. From the university\u2019s perspective, a politically connected former judge could be a boon to fundraising. From the faculty\u2019s perspective, during an active Republican-led assault on academia<\/a>, a Republican dean reads a lot like a white flag. <\/p>\n This controversy has now roped in Kentucky\u2019s governor, who publicly inquired about the University of Kentucky\u2019s decision-making<\/a> citing the judge\u2019s appointment and the elevation of the school\u2019s athletic director to a vague \u201cexecutive in residence\u201d role earning $950,000 a year through 2030. <\/p>\n The selection matters for the school\u2019s accreditation because ABA Interpretation 203-1<\/a> notes: \u201cExcept in circumstances demonstrating good cause, a dean should not be appointed or reappointed to a new term over the stated objection of a substantial majority of the faculty.\u201d There\u2019s also an accreditation standard requiring the dean to hold tenure \u201cexcept in extraordinary circumstances,\u201d which should be unavailable to the judge, as he lacks the necessary scholarly qualifications. Provost Robert DiPaola, who ran the search, decided to roll past both of those standards. Faculty member Ramsi Woodcock flagged the problem to the UK president and wrote an op-ed in the Courier Journal<\/a> making these procedural arguments.<\/p>\n But, according to the email, a \u201csubstantial majority\u201d of the faculty \u201cexpressed\u201d that Judge Van Tatenhove \u201cdoes not meet\u201d the job requirements\u00a0advertised<\/a>\u00a0by the university because he lacks \u201cexperience arising from a senior-level administrative role such as department chair, center director, associate dean, or dean.\u201d<\/p>\n The email also stated that Van Tatenhove \u201cdoes not possess the necessary qualifications (including a record of scholarship) to be granted tenure under the Rosenberg College of Law\u2019s current rules.\u201d Van Tatenhove\u2019s only academic publication appears to be a\u00a0note<\/a>\u00a0he penned as a law student forty years ago. The ABA\u00a0requires<\/a>\u00a0that a dean be a tenured law professor.<\/p>\n At any school interested in protecting its accreditation, that would have been the end of Van Tatenhove\u2019s candidacy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But Judge Van Tatenhove doesn\u2019t have the scholarly record because he\u2019s spent the last two decades as a federal judge. I don\u2019t know as though there are established canons of construction for interpreting ABA accreditation rules, but a standard probably should not be read to prevent a school from appointing a federal judge. <\/p>\n That said, the school couldn\u2019t leave well enough alone and extended this defense of Judge Van Tatenhove to an absurdist end. A Kentucky spokesperson argued that Van Tatenhove\u2019s judicial record is, a kind of scholarship in itself<\/em>, because \u201chundreds of his judicial opinions have been effectively peer-reviewed by the Sixth Circuit with an affirmation rate above 80%.\u201d Insert a head-smack emoji here. The \u201cSixth Circuit as peer review\u201d claim, makes you worry that they maybe they don\u2019t<\/em> understand how scholarship works.<\/p>\n Also, as a soon-to-be-former Kentucky professor notes of Dean Davis<\/a>, \u201cthe last permanent dean of the law school has not published any legal scholarship in decades.\u201d It\u2019s hard to hang a hat on a standard that the faculty hasn\u2019t worried about for years.<\/p>\n The ABA\u2019s accreditation body declined to comment on a specific school<\/a>, as the ABA\u2019s accreditation body always does.<\/p>\n This afternoon, Above the Law<\/em> has learned, the provost has called an emergency meeting. Presumably, the goal is to convince everyone to stop taking this fight to the Courier Journal.<\/p>\n Judge Van Tatenhove seems more than qualified to run a law school. But even if faculty shouldn\u2019t be able to unilaterally pick their boss, they should be able to nix one. That\u2019s a balance that the ABA standard gets right \u2014 a substantial majority just needs to not actively reject the choice. That\u2019s a low bar, and Kentucky couldn\u2019t clear it. <\/p>\n A law school can\u2019t function if the majority of the faculty doesn\u2019t have confidence in the dean. Maybe Judge Van Tatenhove is prepared to stand up to the anti-intellectual broadside his fellow Republicans have launched, but the faculty has ample reason to prefer \u2014 at this moment in history \u2014 a candidate from within the legal academy. The board of trustees meets April 24 to formally confirm the appointment. <\/p>\n As long as he\u2019s got a plan for the cockroaches, he\u2019ll be fine.<\/p>\n Earlier<\/strong>: Federal Judge Steps Up To Be Law School Dean<\/a><\/p>\n Law school deans have a weird job description. Technically, they lead the law school in its academic mission. But, more realistically, they fundraise, game the U.S. News rankings, and manage the law school bureaucracy. Ideally, they keep the alumni happy at football games \u2014 or basketball games depending on the school in question. A unicorn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":149387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Headshot-300x200-c13IQo.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\n![\"Headshot\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/11\/Headshot-300x200.jpg?resize=192%2C128&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-1744638442-300x300.jpeg?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
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\n![\"Headshot\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Headshot-300x200.jpg?resize=188%2C125&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"