Historical Faculty

Pamela Brooks Gann taught at Duke Law from 1975-1988 and served as Dean of the Law School from 1988-1999.  As a professor she specialized in federal income taxation, international taxation, international trade, and international business transactions.  She continued to teach in international trade while Dean.  She has visited at the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan; she has taught abroad in the People’s Republic of China and Paris, France; and she has been a faculty member in the Seminar in American Law and Legal Institutions, The Salzburg Seminar in Salzburg, Austria.  She was awarded an International Affairs Fellowship by the Council on Foreign Relations, through which she worked at the International Monetary Fund and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Gann was elected to membership in the Council of Foreign Relations, the International Women’s Forum, the Society of International Business Fellows, the American Law Institute, and she was an elected Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.  She served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS).  Gann was chair of the AALS Section on Deans, the AALS Committee on Electronic Publication of Legal Scholarship, and the North Carolina Chapter of the International Women’s Forum.  She was a member of the Board of Governors of the Center for Creative Leadership.  In 1988 Gann was awarded the “Woman Lawyer of the Year” distinction by the North Carolina Association of Women Attorneys.

While Gann was Dean twelve new faculty members joined the Law School.  In part through her direction the Law School is considered a leader in the application of information technology in legal education and the publication of legal scholarship.  Gann expanded the Law School’s international programs, including the establishment of its Summer Institute in Transnational Law located in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Asia-America Institute in Transnational Law in Hong Kong.  Under Gann’s leadership the Duke Law School became a more diverse community.  The entering class the year before Gann’s departure was the most diverse in the Law School’s history, with 50 percent of the student body composed of women, and 27 percent of minorities, of which 18 percent were under-represented minorities.  In addition Gann successfully led the Law School through its first capital campaign, raising over $17 million.  The campaign enabled the Law School to make a $16.7 million addition to the building, and to fund three chaired professorships and several endowed student scholarships.

Gann was born in Monroe, North Carolina in 1948.  She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in mathematics in 1970.  In 1973 she completed her law degree at Duke.  While a law student she was Articles Editor of the Duke Law Journal and was elected to the Order of the Coif.  Gann practiced law in Atlanta and Charlotte before returning to Duke Law in 1975 to teach.

In 1999 Gann became president of Claremont McKenna College, a private, co-educational liberal arts college in California.  Gann promoted and advanced Claremont McKenna as she did Duke Law. In July 2013 Gann stepped down as president at Claremont McKenna.  She continues to serve that institution as Trustee Professor of Legal Studies and George R. Roberts Fellow, Senior Fellow of the Kravis Leadership Institute, and President Emerita of the college. 

Sources:

Duke University, School of Law, Bulletin of Duke University School of Law [serial]

Pamela B. Gann-Biography, Claremont McKenna College, http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/about/presidents/gann.php[perma.cc/Z3W7-XZ58] (last visited Feb. 11, 2015)