New Dean Takes the Helm at Law School

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“I was impressed with Johanna’s passion for USF’s mission and Jesuit values, and her commitment to advocating for law students, faculty, and staff,” said Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Eileen Chia-Ching Fung. “She displayed a strong vision of collaborative leadership, inclusive partnership, and data-driven decision making that will position our law school for continued success. She has a clear understanding of where USF currently stands and the potential it holds for the future, not shying away from challenges and thriving on an enterprising approach to community engagement and growth.”  

Kalb has been recognized for both her scholarship and her teaching. Under her leadership at the University of Idaho, which has campuses in Boise and Moscow, the law school’s incoming classes grew to be the largest and most diverse in the college’s history. Among the projects she oversaw were the acquisition of, and move into, a new building for the Boise campus; the design and implementation of a comprehensive plan for improving inclusion and belonging at the law school; and the college’s two most successful fundraising years. She also prioritized the creation of an extensive program for academic success and bar preparation that resulted in a 10 percent improvement in bar passage for recent graduates.

Kalb is delighted to bring her leadership skills to a Jesuit university. “First and foremost, I love the tenets of a Jesuit education, and especially a Jesuit legal education,” she said. “I love that USF understands that a Jesuit legal education is broad and inclusive — you can do good as a public defender, of course, but you can also do good as a tech lawyer, as an entertainment lawyer, as a tax lawyer. We want to have lawyers practicing in a broad array of disciplines, because that means we’re bringing good lawyers, who want to have a positive impact on the world, to every area of the profession.”

Prior to her time in Idaho, Kalb was associate dean of administration and special initiatives and Edward J. Womac Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law at Loyola University New Orleans School of Law. A widely published human rights scholar, her research and teaching interests include constitutional law, international human rights, and the law of democracy. She is a co-author of the first law school textbook focused on domestic human rights, Human Rights Advocacy in the United States, and her recent scholarship appears in the U.C. Irvine Law Review, Yale Journal of International Law, Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and other journals.

An academic fellow of the National Civil Justice Institute and a member of the Law School Admission Council's committee on diversity, Kalb is also a member of the Deans Steering Committee of the American Association of Law Schools, and a contributing author to the leadership volume of Penn State Dickinson’s book series on building anti-racist legal education. From 2014 to 2016, she served as visiting associate professor of law and director of the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law School, and from 2013 to 2021, she was a fellow in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

Kalb earned a BA in German studies from Stanford University, followed by an MA in international relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a JD from Yale University.