Daniel Abebe

Daniel Abebe is Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He became the 16th dean of Columbia Law School on August 1, 2024.

Dean Abebe’s scholarship centers on the relationship between the constitutional law of U.S. foreign affairs and public international law. His research has been published in leading academic journals, such as International Studies Quarterly, The University of Chicago Law
Review, The Supreme Court Review, and the Stanford, Chicago, Virginia, and University of Pennsylvania journals of international law, and he has presented at conferences and symposia around the world. Dean Abebe has taught Property, Foreign Relations Law, Conflict of Laws, Public International Law, and Legal Issues in International Transactions.

Before joining Columbia Law School, Dean Abebe served as vice provost for academic affairs and governance at the University of Chicago, where he was responsible for stewarding critical aspects of university-wide academic life as well as important strategic assignments, such as articulating and affirming the principles of free expression and institutional neutrality. He was the Harold J. and Marion F. Green Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School and served as deputy dean from 2016 to 2018, prior to his tenure in the Office of the Provost from 2018 to 2024.

Dean Abebe is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Higher Learning Commission. He previously served as a member of the Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratory, and as chair of the Board of Directors of Chapin Hall and the Board of Directors of the University of Chicago Charter School. He clerked for Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and he worked at the New York office of Cravath, Swaine & Moore.