Name Susan Prager | ||
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Education Stanford University, University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA School of Law | ||
Susan Westerberg Prager (born December 14, 1942) is an American legal scholar and administrator. She is currently the dean of Southwestern Law School.
Before leading Southwestern Law School, Prager served as the sixth Executive Director and CEO of the Association of American Law Schools for six years. Prior to her service at the AALS, Prager was the provost of Dartmouth College and president of Occidental College. From 1982 through 1996, Prager was the dean of the UCLA School of Law, giving her the longest tenure of any dean in UCLA Law history. In 1982, she became the first female dean of a law school in the UC system and only one of two female law school deans in the country. When Prager left her deanship in 1998, the law school established a faculty chair in her name. In addition, during her tenure at UCLA, Prager became the second woman to serve as the president of the Association of American Law Schools.
Prager was born in Sacramento, California, and grew up in Sloughhouse, California, a small agricultural community outside of Sacramento. She received her undergraduate degree in history from Stanford University in 1964, and she later received a master's degree in history, also from Stanford. Prager served for 14 years as a trustee of Stanford University during which time she served as the Vice President of the Board and she chaired the board's Academic Policy Committee. Prager also worked for U.S. Senator Thomas Kuchel of California, the minority whip in the Senate from 1959-1969, and for members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the California State Assembly. She received her law degree from UCLA and was editor-in-chief of the UCLA Law Review. In addition, she practiced law at Powe, Porter & Alphin in Durham, North Carolina before returning to the UCLA School of Law faculty, where she focused on family law, community property, and historic preservation law.