After Less Than Two Years, Miami Law Dean Steps Down; Business School Professor Named Interim Dean

Miami Herald, ‘Totally My Decision’: After Less Than Two Years, University of Miami Law Dean Steps Down:

Nearly three years after his official predecessor got abruptly fired, a move that stirred a national wave of criticism at the time, the University of Miami law school dean will step down in April.

“I am stepping down as dean at the end of the month,” David Yellen, the current dean, told the Herald when reached Friday afternoon, adding he would take a one-year sabbatical and then return as a faculty member to the law school.

UM President Julio Frenk abruptly pushed out the last dean, Anthony Varona, in May 2021. Frenk’s decision sparked outrage among professors, students and alumni, and prompted Varona to hire a lawyer who denounced the move at the time as “an egregious violation” of the dean’s rights. Varona is now the law dean at Seattle University, a private Jesuit Catholic institution in Washington state.

Yellen declined to explain why he resigned, but said he chose to hand in his notice. “This was totally my decision,” said Yellen, a New Jersey native who joined UM in July 2022.

Frenk announced the news to the UM community in an email Friday but didn’t offer any motives. ...

The president named Patricia Sanchez Abril, the interim dean of the UM Graduate School and a business law professor at the Miami Herbert Business School, as the interim dean of the law school. ...

Last May, for the first time ever, the law school at Florida International University surpassed the UM law school in national rankings. FIU’s was ranked third in the state, besting the private UM, which was founded in the 1920s and whose annual tuition is nearly three times higher than what an in-state law student pays at the state-funded FIU.