School of Law Dean

Dear Faculty, Staff and Students,

It is my great pleasure to announce that Professor Anthony “Tony” Varona has been appointed the next Dean of Seattle University’s School of Law. Professor Varona joins SU from the University of Miami, where he served as Dean and the M. Minnette Massey Chair in Law and now holds the Massey Chair as a tenured professor and Dean Emeritus. He will join Seattle University on July 1.

Dean-Designate Varona brings to the School of Law a distinguished career as an academic and administrator. As Dean at the University of Miami, he led the law school in recruiting the two strongest classes in its recorded history, improving its national reputational ratings and student selectivity, significantly increasing bar success outcomes and elevating its intellectual life. Even as his deanship largely coincided with the COVID pandemic, Professor Varona launched new partnerships and programs in such areas as international law, environmental law, transactional skills, racial justice and human rights. A seasoned fundraiser, he brought in critical resources, including support for COVID-disrupted students.

Prior to his time at the University of Miami, Professor Varona was for 14 years a professor at American University Washington College of Law, where he served in a number of key leadership roles, including as program director, academic dean and vice dean. An award-winning scholar, he has published extensively, particularly in areas of media and communications law, sexuality and gender law and diversity in legal education. He is a member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Membership Review Committee and has served as an Executive Committee member of the AALS Section on Teaching Methods. He is an American Bar Association and AALS accreditation site visitor and reporter and has served as co-editor of the AALS Journal of Legal Education, as well as on the national boards of directors of the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, Stonewall National Museum and Archives and the Alliance for Justice. Professor Varona was a member of the District of Columbia’s Global Legal Practice Task Force and led the host/planning committee for the Fourth National People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference in 2019, thought to be the largest domestic gathering of minority law scholars in history.

Before entering academia, Professor Varona served as the first General Counsel and Legal Director for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization. He was a Wasserstein Public Interest Law Fellow at Harvard Law School and practiced as a communications/media law associate at Skadden Arps and Mintz Levin in Washington, D.C. He started his legal career as an honors program enforcement attorney at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. 

With his accomplishments and background—including bachelor’s and law degrees from Boston College and an LL.M. degree from Georgetown University—Dean-Designate Varona values and embodies our Jesuit educational mission and will be a tremendous fit for our School of Law and university.

He asked that I share the following with you:

“I am elated by the opportunity to serve as Seattle University School of Law’s next dean, under the visionary leadership of Seattle University’s new President Eduardo Peñalver and Provost Shane Martin. I look forward to collaborating with my new Seattle U Law colleagues in taking the law school to new heights of achievement and prominence. Seattle U Law is an extraordinary law school, with a superb faculty comprised of first-rate scholars and teachers, a talented and student-centered staff, students who are well-rounded and richly diverse, who graduate to serve as distinguished and socially-minded practitioners and judges, entrepreneurs and public servants, both throughout the Pacific Northwest and the nation.”

President Peñalver, for his part, shared:

“Tony Varona is the right dean for this pivotal moment in Seattle University School of Law’s history. His roots in Jesuit higher education at Boston College and Georgetown, along with his deeply held commitment to public service, are a perfect match for Seattle University’s Jesuit-inspired mission to educate powerful advocates for justice. With his personal warmth, his powerful vision and his tremendous energy, Tony will accelerate the School of Law forward. I have long admired Tony’s work as a legal academic and administrator and I am excited to have the opportunity to work with him over the coming years.”

I want to thank the members of the search committee, who are listed below, for the excellent work they did and the tremendous result they have made possible. I also want to thank Dean Annette Clark for her continued leadership of the law school. That we were able to draw such incredibly qualified candidates speaks in large part to the work she has done to strengthen the school and position it for even greater success in the future. We look forward to celebrating Dean Clark closer to the conclusion of her deanship. 

I know you will join me in warmly welcoming Professor Varona to Seattle University and our School of Law.

Sincerely,

Shane P. Martin, PhD
Provost

School of Law Dean Search Committee

• Kristen Swanson, Co-Chair, Dean, College of Nursing
• Brooke Coleman, Co-Chair, Co-Associate Dean of Research and Faculty Development and Professor, Law
• Deirdre Bowen, Associate Professor, Law
• Mark Chinen, Professor, Law
• Anita Crawford-Willis, Judge, Seattle Municipal Court
• Kristin DiBiase, Associate Dean, Student Affairs
• Diane Dick, Professor, Law
• Valerie Garcia, President, Student Bar Association
• Wilson Garone, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
• Paul Heer, Attorney, Foster Garvey PC
• Paul Holland, Associate Professor, Law
• Alison Ivey, General Counsel, Vulcan Inc.
• Natasha Martin, Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer
• Megan Motley, Associate Director, Academic Resource Center
• Thaddeus Teo, Director of Development, Law
• James Willette, Associate Provost and Dean of Students

Stephanie Wilson, Associate Director of Reference Services and Outreach