August 31, 2025
Alena Allen claims she was a victim of gender and racial discrimination over the end of her leadership tenure.
The first Black Law School Dean at Louisiana State University has announced that she will step down from the role against her own wishes.
Alena Allen made history in 2023 as the first Black person and woman to lead the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center. The Louisiana Illuminator reported that Allen will continuing teaching at the Baton Rouge school as a full-time faculty member. The University announced the end of her leadership tenure in an internal email sent Aug. 29.
However, Allen claims that she was a victim of racial and gender discrimination that forced her to leave her position. According to NOLA, Allen’s attorney asserted that she did not agree to resign despite LSU leadership announcing the decision. Now, she may pursue legal action over alleged whistleblower retaliation.
She says she was prompted to leave following her questioning about “irregularities” in the LSU law school’s finances. However, when she tried to address the budget gaps, which occurred before her appointment, Allen believed LSU leaders shifted the blame onto her. Allen’s attorney further claims that the LSU Board of Supervisors “engaged in systematic discrimination and retaliatory conduct” against the education leader.
“I am the first woman and the first person of color to serve as the permanent dean of the Paul M. Hebert Law Center. That fact is not incidental—it is central to what follows,” Allen wrote in a response to auditors. “I find it deeply troubling, and frankly difficult to ignore, that I appear to be held to a standard far more exacting than that applied to my white, overwhelmingly male predecessors. It was they who oversaw and entrenched the very practices I have since questioned and begun to reform.”
After Allen requested an investigation into the racial and gender discrimination, she met with LSU leaders to a shocking development. At the meeting, they told her that the Law School would go in a “different direction” without her leadership.
The news comes as several Black administrators at LSU previously announced their departures, including the university’s first Black president, William Tate. Tate left his position on June 30 to become the president of Rutgers University.
Allen will lead the Law School until the end of the spring 2026 semester. In the meantime, Interim LSU Provost Troy Blanchard shared that a national search for her replacement will take place.
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