By SHANNON O. WELLS
Growing up in a multiracial foster care home with 11 other children in Shaler Township, Pitt’s Jerry Dickinson is no stranger to instability.
“I had to overcome a lot of difficulties, emotional trauma and anxiety as a young child in a foster home and sort of a chaotic upbringing,” he says.
For many, such a chronic sense of uncertainty is difficult to shake once faced with adulthood responsibilities and the work world. Dickinson, however, found that his upbringing instilled in him not just a commitment to equity and public service, but also a deep well of stoicism he could tap into when taking on new challenges.
“My wife says I'm extremely stoic in that, when it comes to things that are challenges, I tend to run at them as fast as I can and take on and overcome the challenge,” Dickinson says, admitting his childhood turmoil ultimately served him well. “I overcame it, not without some bruises and bumps along the way.
“But that's how I see it, that with every challenge you're going to get beat up and you're going to have some slip-ups here and there, but the goal is to overcome that challenge.
“And that's sort of what I feel here with Pitt,” he adds, referring to his new role as dean of the School of Law.
Dickinson, who joined Pitt’s law faculty in 2017 and was appointed vice dean in March 2023, was named dean following a comprehensive national search. He officially took the reins from interim dean Mary Crossley on Jan. 15.
At 38, Dickinson is among the youngest deans in the school’s history and just the second Black man to lead the law school following William Carter Jr.’s 2012-18 tenure as dean.
Holding degrees from the College of Holy Cross, Fordham University and Witwatersrand School of Law in Johannesburg, South Africa, Dickinson brings to the role years of teaching and scholarship as a constitutional law scholar and civil rights lawyer.
His work, which also encompasses judicial federalism, property, law and democracy, and race and the law, has been published in leading law reviews and cited by U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 3rd and 6th circuits, amicus briefs filed by members of Congress in federal courts, and in national and international news outlets.
Before joining Pitt’s faculty, Dickinson practiced at Reed Smith LLP in Pittsburgh, where he founded and coordinated the Housing Rights Project, a pro bono initiative advocating for indigent tenants in Allegheny County eviction proceedings. He also served as a law clerk for Theodore A. McKee, former chief judge of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.
When considering his new position, the amiable councilor exudes an unpretentious, gratitude-driven air of confidence — a sense that he has the right set of tools for the job.
“This dean position in many ways is that combination: You’ve got to be a scholar and academic … but at the same time, you have to have some administrative experience and wherewithal, which I have as vice dean,” he says. “You also just have to know how to navigate coalitions, stakeholders and constituents, and that's exactly what I did on the campaign trail, as a federal candidate for office.
“So I'm more charged up and ready to go and really looking at this and saying, All right, I've accumulated all these skill sets and these experiences and knowledge in various rules as a lawyer and as a human rights activist, as a politician, as a fundraiser,” he adds. “Now is time to put that all to practice and utilize it in a way that helps to put Pitt hopefully on a trajectory to greatness, and that's going to be with the help of the faculty and the staff and the alumni base.”
Making a difference
In 2005, when Dickinson left Pittsburgh to study and play soccer at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, he figured he’d “never come back.”
“Like many young Pittsburghers who are leaving, they say, ‘Well, I'm going off to explore the world, and I'll come back for Thanksgiving every once in a while,’” he says. “So I left on an academic and athletic scholarship to the College of the Holy Cross.”
For four years, he studied on a double major of political science and sociology and played on the Division 1 men's soccer team.
“I was actually a captain of the team for three years, which is very odd for Division 1 … but from sophomore up to senior year, did my studies and was extremely academically focused and athletically focused,” he says. “(I) didn't have a whole lot of time for anything else.”
After graduating from Holy Cross, Dickinson earned a Fulbright scholarship at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Law in Johannesburg.
“I went to be sort of a human rights activist and study comparative constitutional law and housing law,” he recalls of working alongside lawyers at the Center for Applied Legal studies, where Nelson Mandela and other well-known anti-apartheid leaders did much of their work. “(I) was assisting South African lawyers in representing mostly Black, South African squatters in eviction proceedings in the inner-city slums of Johannesburg.”
Dickinson cites his foster home upbringing as influencing the value system that drives his work.
“When some of my foster and adoptive siblings left the home — and some of them led very difficult lives including incarceration, drug addiction, street homelessness and other things like that — seeing and watching them struggle with the idea of shelter and access to affordable housing, all that stuff really played a role in shaping my desire to take my skill sets and knowledge and make some change and become a civil-rights lawyer,” he says.
After returning the U.S. in 2010 to complete his law studies at the Fordham University School of Law in New York, Dickinson’s adoptive parents became ill, necessitating regular visits to Pittsburgh. Moving back in 2012, he worked at Reed Smith and with the Neighborhood Legal Services Association while caring for his parents.
“I decided it was probably best for me to pack up and (leave behind) my dreams of being a white-collar criminal defense lawyer in the big, big city,” he says of New York, “and go back home and start my career as a lawyer in Pittsburgh so I could be closer to my parents, not knowing how much longer they had to live, given those serious illnesses.”
After one year spent serving his court clerkship in Philadelphia, Dickinson settled back in Pittsburgh. Noting Dickinson’s impressive resume, a “gentleman” from the legal community who Dickinson had never met before emailed out of the blue, encouraging him to look into academia.
“He was a mentor during the interview process, because he knew I didn't have all the support that you typically would need to enter into academia, given how selective and competitive it is,” Dickinson says. “I thought I'd become a civil rights lawyer and a politician or something of the sort. Long story short, I threw my hat into the ring and applied for the (Pitt faculty) position (in 2017).”
Telling the story
When Pitt’s law school leadership entered an extended period of instability, Dickinson had a front-row seat.
When Haider Ala Hamoudi stepped in as the law school’s interim dean after Amy Wildermuth abruptly stepped down from the role in early 2023, he asked Dickinson to serve as vice dean. Hamoudi led the school until June 2023, when he left to become dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Law.
Mary Crossley, who served as law school dean from 2005-12, took over as interim dean and asked Dickinson to stay on. “‘I could really use your help in transitioning and doing all this stuff,’” Dickinson recalls her saying. “And I said, ‘Of course, I'd be happy to stick with you.’”
Calling Crossley a “great mentor,” Dickinson lauded her experience and vision. “As institutionalists, in that sense, we both wanted to bring the law school to a level of stability, and we wanted to put the law school on track so that whoever was the next dean would be in a much smoother, much steadier position to take on the helm and take on the law school moving forward.
“We were able to generate a lot of trust and respect amongst the faculty,” he says, “and that was all very helpful for sort of moving forward with things.”
Dickinson says his experiences facing the public when he ran for congressional district seats in 2020 and 2022 makes his approach to the law school dean position is “very much external facing.”
“That is, putting Pitt out there on the map, being engaging with the alumni base, raising money, using the experiences I had as a politician to now raise money and resources for the law school for its own longevity. It's a big change, because (Crossley) is much more internal-focused, and that's OK,” he says. “But given what my experiences are and my personality, (I’m focused on) really trying to tell Pitt Law’s story and really get Pitt Law’s brand out there, regionally and nationally.”
A 'good match'
David A. Harris, Pitt law school professor, calls Dickinson a “solid person who cares about our school and all the people who make up the law school community — our students, our staff and our faculty.
“Good leadership starts with a vision for where the institution and the people in it will go and what they will achieve together,” Harris says. “But kindness, humanity, drive and real smarts are what gets the vision to come together and take us all forward. Jerry Dickinson has those four qualities in abundance.”
Noting that Dickinson has always been a “stellar teacher and a strong legal scholar,” Harris, as a faculty observer, experienced Dickinson teaching before he received tenure status.
“Even as a relatively junior faculty member, he had a natural feel for how to help students understand difficult concepts, and to keep them interested and excited,” he recalls. “I remember coming out of those sessions thinking, ‘This is a person with an unlimited upside.’ Our students are so lucky they get to learn with him.”
Mark Nordenberg, chancellor emeritus and chair of Pitt’s Institute of Politics, said Dickinson moves into the dean’s position with many “distinct advantages."
"(As) a faculty member for eight years and vice dean for two years, he already has a well-informed sense of the school’s strengths and needs. Because of the opportunities it already has afforded him, he has both an emotional attachment to the law school and a heartfelt commitment to its progress,” Nordenberg added. “These are challenging roles, and that sense of commitment can be a critical factor.”
Nordenberg, who serves as director of the Dick Thornburgh Forum for Law & Public Policy, noted that Dickinson’s prior experience with the “global law firm” Reed Smith LLP, demonstrates the crucial criteria of being a good leader “both inside and outside the school.”
“… As a faculty member and as an administrator, Dean Dickinson already has built a large reservoir of respect and trust with the faculty and staff,” he said. “That combination of experience has given him extensive connections to the local legal profession, which also will be a major asset in his work as dean.
“This looks to me to be a very good match, both for the School of Law and for its new dean.”
Vision of greatness
Dickinson, who lives in Pittsburgh’s Regent Square neighborhood with his wife, Emily, their two daughters, Nyla and Aria, and their dog Denzel, says he wants to leverage his status as one of the youngest law school deans in the U.S. to “really put a spotlight on Pitt Law. Because this is a pretty extraordinary faculty and extraordinary student body, and I think the world and the nation need to know how great we are.”
To that end, Dickinson has laid out what he calls an “aspirational, energetic sort of vision” that aims to nurture and promote a nationally recognized “formidable powerhouse law school” that will attract students who want to be “part of something that's really special, just given our history.”
Through expanding and creating programs, including a robust social justice public interest-oriented center, Dickinson’s goal for the school is to continue being “a change agent on all aspects of the law in our region. That's a big, big part of the goal.
“When you talk about resources and fundraising and bringing in a whole lot more money, what comes along with that, I think, is a greater, stronger reputation nationally,” he says. “And I expect that our U.S. News & World Report ranking will go up and we will become a formidable, top-ranked law school given our graduation rates and our bar-passage rates and our job employment rates.
“Those are all major indicators for ranking success,” he says. “And I have no doubt we'll be able to achieve all those things.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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