Susan Westerberg Prager Named Sixth Executive Director of AALS

Former UCLA Law School Dean Susan Westerberg Prager has been named Executive Director and CEO of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). Prager will become the sixth Executive Director of the AALS since its founding in 1900. Her appointment becomes effective September 1, 2008.

Professor Prager is a graduate of Stanford University and the UCLA School of Law, where she served as editor-in-chief of the UCLA Law Review.  She joined the UCLA faculty in 1972, became Dean a decade later, and served as dean from 1982-1998 - the longest tenure of any dean in UCLA law school history.  At the time Prager became Dean she was one of two female law Deans in the country.  Prager was a trustee of Stanford University for 14 years.  She chaired the board's Academic Policy Committee and was a Vice President of the Board.  She left UCLA in 1999 to become Provost at Dartmouth College, and recently was President of Occidental College in Los Angeles.  Prager is a longtime Director of the Pacific Mutual Holding Company, which owns Pacific Life Insurance Company.   Over the years she has been engaged in the national legal education community in a wide variety of ways, serving as AALS President in 1986.   She is Professor of History at Occidental College and the Arjay and Frances Fearing Miller Professor of Law Emeritus at UCLA.  Her research has focused on marital property law, and on California legal history.