Next Dean of University of Iowa College of Law: Kevin Washburn ’93

The University of Iowa has named Kevin Washburn ’93 as the next dean of the N. Williams Hines UI College of Law. Washburn is a former law school dean at the University of New Mexico. In 2012, he was nominated by then-President Obama to serve as assistant secretary of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

He is an expert in Native American law, criminal law, and gambling law. A citizen of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, Washburn earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oklahoma and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School. He went on to clerk for Judge William C. Canby Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and joined the U.S. Department of Justice honors program.

He taught at the University of Minnesota Law School in 2002; spent a year as the Oneida Nation Distinguished Visiting Professor of Indian Law at Harvard Law School; and served as the Rosenstiel Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law.

He also worked as a federal prosecutor in New Mexico in the violent crimes section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and was a trial lawyer with the U.S. Justice Department—later serving as general counsel of the National Indian Gaming Commission, according to UI officials.

Read the full announcement from the University of Iowa online here.