David M. Schizer is Dean Emeritus and Harvey R. Miller Professor of Law & Economics at Columbia Law School. He served as dean from 2004 to 2014. At 35, Schizer was the youngest dean in the Law School’s history, and the longest serving dean since 1971. During Schizer’s tenure as dean, he recruited 43 new faculty members and doubled the school’s annual fundraising.

While on a three-year leave from the Law School from 2017 to 2019, Schizer served as CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), a century-old international humanitarian organization. He redesigned JDC’s planning process to allocate its $365 million annual budget more strategically, while also increasing JDC’s philanthropic support.

Schizer is one of the nation’s leading scholars on tax law and on the nonprofit sector. He is a founder and co-director of the Richman Center for Business, Law & Public Policy, a founder and co-chair of the Center for Israeli Legal Studies, and a founder and co-chair of the Charles Evans Gerber Transactional Studies Center. Before joining the Law School faculty in 1998, Schizer was a law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court and for Judge Alex Kozinski on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Schizer began his career in the tax department of Davis, Polk & Wardwell.