Three Black Legal Scholars Are Joining the Faculty at Boston College Law School

Two scholars in property and community development law reform and a clinical professor specializing in criminal justice will be joining the Boston College Law faculty next fall. Thomas W. Mitchell and Lisa T. Alexander come to Boston College Law from Texas A&M University School of Law, where they co-founded and co-direct the Program in Real Estate and Community Development Law. Jenna Cobb comes to Boston College Law from the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service.

Professor Mitchell will be the second holder of the Robert F. Drinan, SJ, Chair. In 2020, he was named a MacArthur Fellow (commonly known as the “Genius Grant”) in recognition of his work “reforming long-standing legal doctrines that deprive Black and other disadvantaged American families of their property and real estate wealth.” Professor Mitchell is a graduate of Amherst College in Massachusetts. He earned a juris doctorate from Howard University and a master’s degree in law from the University of Wisconsin.

Professor Alexander’s work focuses on the centrality of law in making housing markets both more efficient and more equitable. She has done extensive scholarship in legal and extra-legal rights to property, housing, and urban space. Before joining the faculty at Texas A&M, Alexander was a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Law from 2006 to 2017 and held a joint appointment as a professor in the department of landscape architecture and urban planning. Professor Alexander is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She earned a juris doctorate from Columbia University School of Law.

Cobb will be a clinical assistant professor at the law school. As a staff attorney in the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service, she litigated complex and recurring criminal justice issues, seeking to challenge unjust practices in the criminal justice system. Previously, she served as a law clerk for Judge Denise Page Hood in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Since 2015, Cobb has been an adjunct professor at the University of the District of Columbia’s David A. Clarke School of Law. Cobb holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Southern California. She earned a master of divinity degree at Yale Divinity School and a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School, where she served as assistant managing editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Get the JBHE Weekly Bulletin

Receive our weekly email newsletter delivered to your inbox

Latest News

Recent Books of Interest to African American Scholars

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education regularly publishes a list of new books that may be of interest to our readers. The books included are on a wide variety of subjects and present many different points of view.

Nonwhite Patients Are Significantly More Likely to Have Preventative Care Insurance Claims Denied

Scholars from the University of Toronto have found non-White patients are nearly twice as likely as White patients to have an insurance claim denied. On average, they also pay more out-of-pocket costs when their claims are denied.

Leslie Rodriguez-McClellon Named Seventeenth President of Arkansas Baptist College

Prior to her new role, Dr. Rodriguez-McClellon was the vice president of community relations and governmental affairs at Saint Augustine's University in Raleigh. She has a robust background in higher education, including service as the first African American president of Rochester Community and Technical College in Minnesota.

Black Men Remain Underrepresented in the Physician Assistant Profession

From 2012 to 2021, the number of applicants to physician assistant and associate programs grew by 64 percent. However, the share of Black male applicants to these programs remained around 2 percent over this same time period.

Featured Jobs