Mitchell Hamline School of Law, a pioneer in online legal education, has hired a new president and dean who has done similar work in San Francisco.
Anthony Niedwiecki has been dean of Golden Gate University of Law since 2017, where he expanded online courses and began developing a new partially online J.D. program, Mitchell Hamline said Tuesday.
Niedwiecki takes over July 1.
“Mitchell Hamline matches both my personal values and my ideas for what the next steps in legal education should be,” Niedwiecki said in a statement. “I look forward to leading a law school that has always been at the forefront of innovative learning, like its first-in-the-nation hybrid J.D. program, and sharing my own unique vision of preparing students for an ever-changing legal profession.”
Niedwiecki will be the second president and dean at the St. Paul school, which was formed in 2015 with the merger of William Mitchell College of Law and Hamline University’s law school.
The first dean, Mark Gordon, remains on the faculty. Interim dean Peter Knapp returns to the faculty in July.
Lisa A. Gray, chair of the school’s board of trustees, said Niedwiecki’s “extensive experience in areas crucial to our mission — including experiential education, skills integration, and distance learning — make him the perfect choice to lead us forward.”
A Michigan native, Niedwiecki earned a bachelor’s degree in math and education from Wayne State University before teaching high school and community college math in North Carolina. He later earned his law degree from Tulane Law School.
He worked at a number of law schools — Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; John Marshall Law School in Chicago; Temple University’s Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia; and Arizona State University School of Law — before joining Golden Gate.
Niedwiecki is founder and vice president of Fight OUT Loud, a national non-profit that combats hate and discrimination against LGBT people.
In a 2018 Illinois lawsuit, a former John Marshall fundraiser accused Niedwiecki of harassing him for meeting with a prospective donor at a Trump hotel on the eve of the 2016 election. Niedwiecki reportedly encouraged employees to file complaints accusing the fundraiser of being “anti-gay, anti-Muslim and anti-black,” according to ABAJournal.com.
The lawsuit still is pending.
