Penn State Law Dean Resigns Amid Fallout From School’s Anti-Racism Class and Free Beacon Report
- July 25, 2026
Aaron Sibarium, Free Beacon
The dean of Penn State Dickinson Law resigned on Friday after a former student testified before Congress about the school’s mandatory anti-racism class, which required all first-year students to “acknowledge the reality of systemic racism.”
The school announced that Danielle Conway, who also leads the Association of American Law Schools, was stepping down as dean “effective immediately.” The move came two days after David Blackman, a Texas military veteran, said at a congressional hearing that he had left the law school over his objections to the course, which Conway created in 2020. She will remain on the law school’s faculty.
Conway’s departure follows months of legal and public relations turmoil at the law school, whose strategic plan calls to expand “employment opportunities” for “underrepresented” candidates. The school was hit with a civil rights complaint in May after the Free Beacon reported on the plan. A separate Free Beacon report included audio from the required first-year course, Race and the Equal Protection of the Laws, in which speakers asserted that the justice system is “about keeping black people in their place” and called on students to “dismantle systems that racialize, subordinate, and oppress.”