Michael Fitts

Michael Fitts, a legal scholar, is the 15th president of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana and the Judge Rene H. Himel Professor of Law at the Tulane School of Law. He is also the author of numerous articles that have appeared in the Harvard Law Journal and other prestigious scholarly publications.

Michael Fitts grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Doctor William T. Fitts, Jr., was a John Rhea Barton Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Penn Medicine from 1972 through 1975. Dr. Fitts served in World War II as a surgical ward officer in the Affiliated Unit of the University of Pennsylvania, the 20th General Hospital, stationed in the China-Burma-India Theatre. Fitts' maternal grandfather, Joseph H. Willits, Ph.D., LL.D., was a professor and dean of the Wharton School.

Michael Fitts and his wife, Renée J. Sobel, Esq., have two daughters.

Fitts earned a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard University in 1975. Inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird and its heroic protagonist Atticus Finch, he attended Yale Law School. Fitts was editor of the Yale Law Journal and received his juris doctorate in 1979.

Fitts served as a clerk for federal judge and civil rights advocate Leon Higginbotham, who became a mentor to him. He then worked as an attorney in the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, where he served as outside counsel to the President, White House and Cabinet.

His teaching career began at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985. Fitts served 14 years as dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he was recognized for greatly increasing the school’s offerings in interdisciplinary education. He also presided over a quadrupling of Penn Law’s endowment, a more than 40 percent increase in the size of the Law School faculty and a doubling of all forms of student financial aid. Fitts also oversaw the rebuilding or renovation of the entire Law School campus. In recognition of his accomplishments, the Penn Law School's Board of Overseers named a faculty chair, a scholarship and an auditorium at the school in his honor.

...
Wikipedia