Michael
A. Olivas was the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law (Emeritus) at the
University of Houston Law Center and Director of the Institute for Higher
Education Law and Governance at UH. He was a prolific scholar in law and higher education,
advocate and public scholar for social justice, and mentor to many higher
education and law faculty—writing over 175 promotion letters and offering
annual summer institutes for junior scholars for many years. He is the author
or co-author of 16 books, including
Suing Alma Mater, published by Johns
Hopkins University Press, on the subject of higher education and the U.S.
Supreme Court. It was chosen as the 2014 winner of the Steven S. Goldberg Award
for Distinguished Scholarship in Education Law. In 2020, NYU Press published
Perchance
to DREAM, A Legal and Political History of the DREAM Act. In 2017, Carolina
Academic Press published a festschfrift dedicated to his original scholarship,
Law
Professor and Accidental Historian: The Scholarship of Michael A. Olivas, edited by Ediberto Román, and including chapters
by twenty scholars.
He was elected to membership in the American Law
Institute and the National Academy of Education, the only person to have been
selected to both honor academies. He was elected to membership in the American
Bar Foundation (ABF). He served as General Counsel to the American Association
of University Professors (AAUP) from 1994-98, and served on its Litigation
Committee and its Legal Defense Fund. In 1993, he was chosen as Division J’s
Distinguished Scholar by the American Educational Research Association, and
AERA awarded him the 2014 Social Justice in Education Award. In 1994,
he was awarded the Research Achievement Award by the Association for the Study
of Higher Education (ASHE), which also gave him its 2000 Special Merit Award
and in 2017 its
Howard
Bowen Distinguished Career Award. He has been designated an AERA Fellow and as a
NACUA Fellow by the National Association of College and University Attorneys.
Since retiring, he received Lifetime Achievement awards from the University of
New Mexico Law School and the American Association of Hispanics in Higher
Education, and the 2020 Derrick Bell Legacy Award from the Critical Race
Studies in Education Association (CRSEA).
He
has served on the editorial boards of more than 20 scholarly journals,
including the
Journal of
College & University Law. In 2010, he was chosen as the Outstanding
Immigration Professor of the Year by the national Immigration Professors Blog
Group. In 2011, he served as President of the Association of American Law
Schools, and in 2018,
AALS gave him its
Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and
the Law.
During his UH career, he served on or chaired
several dozen committees, including nine national personnel searches for senior
leadership. In 2001, he was chosen for
the
Esther Farfel Award, UH’s highest faculty honor. From February 2016
until May 2017, Professor Olivas served as the President of the University of
Houston-Downtown on an interim basis.
At the national level, he served as a Trustee of
the College Board and as a Trustee of The Access Group, Inc., the major
provider of loans for law and graduate students in the U.S. and Canada. Both
the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the
Hispanic Bar Association of Houston have given him awards for lifetime
achievement. Since 2002, he served as a director on the MALDEF Board. He had a varied
legal consulting practice, including representing faculty, staff,
institutional, and state clients, serving as an expert witness in federal and
state courts (including the U.S. Supreme Court, Circuit Courts of Appeals, and
federal district courts), and joining as a member of litigation teams in
educational, finance, and immigration matters.
He also had a regular radio show on the
Albuquerque, NM, National Public Radio station KANW, "The Law of Rock and
Roll," where he reviews legal developments in music and entertainment law,
appearing as "The Rock and Roll Law Professor." (TM) The show is
syndicated on radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He lectures on
entertainment law subjects to lawyers, entertainers, and trade groups. His UHLC
Briefcase podcast “
Entertainers
Dying Without Wills,” won the Gold Webcast/Podcasts Award in the 2018
Collegiate Advertising Award competition.
After more than 38 years on the UH faculty,
Professor Olivas retired to his Santa Fe, New Mexico hometown in 2019, where continued
his writing and lecturing schedule. The Law Center has chosen to honor him and
his wife (UH Professor Emerita Augustina H. Reyes) by naming the
Olivas/Reyes Reading Room in the new O’Quinn Law Bldg. on campus.
