Michael Fitts

He serves as the current president of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana and the Judge Rene H. Himel Professor of Law at the Tulane University School of Law.

Fitts is a former dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Fitts received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College in 1975. Inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird and its heroic protagonist Atticus Finch, he attended Yale Law School. Fitts was editor of The Yale Law Journal and received a Juris Doctor in 1979.

Law career

Fitts served as a clerk for federal judge and civil rights advocate Leon Higginbotham, who became a mentor to him. He then worked as an attorney in the United States Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, where he served as outside counsel to the President, the White House, and the Cabinet.

Academic administration

University of Pennsylvania

His teaching career began at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985. Fitts served 14 years as dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, from 2000 to 2014, where he was recognized for greatly increasing the school's offerings in interdisciplinary education. He also presided over a quadrupling of Penn Law's endowment, a more than 40 percent increase in the size of the Law School faculty and a doubling of all forms of student financial aid. Fitts also oversaw the rebuilding or renovation of the entire Law School campus. In recognition of his accomplishments, the Penn Law School's Board of Overseers named a faculty chair, a scholarship and an auditorium at the school in his honor.

Fitts has written extensively on presidential power, separation of powers, executive branch decision-making, improving the structure of political parties and administrative law. He served as president of the American Law Deans Association.

Tulane University

Fitts became president of Tulane in July 2014. Fitts launched task forces for interdisciplinary collaboration. In May 2018, he had an approval rating of 97.3%.

Fitts has initiated a campus master planning process redesigned to promote connections.

• Beacon Award for Public Service (2014)
• Urban Leadership Award, Urban Institute (2014)
• Michael A. Fitts Distinguished Professor of Law (2013)
• Named one of the "Nine Most Transformative U.S. Law Deans" over the past decade, Brian Leiter's Law School Report (2011)
• Friends Select School Distinguished Alumni/ae Award (2007)

His father, William T. Fitts, Jr., was a John Rhea Barton Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Penn Medicine from 1972 through 1975 and served in World War II as a surgical ward officer in the Affiliated Unit of the University of Pennsylvania, the 20th General Hospital, stationed in the China-Burma-India Theatre. Fitts' maternal grandfather, Joseph H. Willits, was a professor and dean of the Wharton School.

Michael Fitts and his wife, Renée J. Sobel, have two daughters.