Jennifer Mnookin

Jennifer Leigh Mnookin (born 1967) is an American legal scholar who has been the 30th chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison since August 2022. She previously served as dean of the UCLA School of Law from August 2015 to June 2022.

On January 25, 2026, the Board of Trustees of Columbia University named Mnookin the incoming 21st president of Columbia University, effective July 1, 2026.^[1][2]

Born in 1967 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Jennifer Mnookin is the daughter of Dale Mnookin and Robert Mnookin, a professor at Harvard Law School.^[3][4] Her family is Jewish and she was raised in the Bay Area.^[5]

Mnookin received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University in 1988, a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School in 1995, and a Ph.D. in the history and sociology of science and technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999.^[6][7] She was an editor for The Harvard Crimson when she was in college.^[6]

From 1998 to 2005, Mnookin was on the faculty of the University of Virginia School of Law, with one year (2002–2003) spent as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School.^[8][9]

She joined the faculty of the UCLA School of Law in 2005, where she served as vice dean for faculty and research from 2007 to 2009, as vice dean for faculty recruitment and intellectual life from 2012 to 2013, and as dean from August 2015 to June 2022.^[10]

On May 16, 2022, the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System announced they had unanimously chosen Mnookin to be the 30th chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She took office on August 4, 2022.^[11]

Beginning in 2023, Mnookin promoted a series of events, titled "Deliberation Dinners", designed to foster civil dialogue around contentious issues among students, faculty, and staff ^[12]. These events grew into a larger initiative launched in December 2025 called "The Wisconsin Exchange: Pluralism in Practice,"^[13] encompassing a campus-wide program of workshops, fellowships, grants, and dedicated lectures.

While Mnookin has been praised by faculty, staff, and administration for critical advancements in university infrastructure, research expenditures, and financial assistance,^[14] she has come under criticism by undergraduates for her initial handling of the Gaza War protests in the Spring of 2024, and a perceived lack of engagement with student groups.^[15] She has additionally faced criticism by undergraduates and alumni for the performance of Head Football Coach Luke Fickell, who was hired at the beginning of her tenure, and has presided over consecutive losing seasons for the Wisconsin Badgers, as well as declining home attendance at Camp Randall Stadium.^[16]

On April 29, 2024, during the Gaza war, students and community members established a Gaza war protest encampment on Library Mall.^[17] Mnookin designated campus leaders to meet with protest leaders and discuss demands soon after the encampment was established and pledged to meet with protesters personally when the tents, which were in violation of the state law that prohibits camping on UW grounds,^[18] were removed.^[19]

Campus leaders asked protesters multiple times^[20] over several days to bring their demonstration into conformity with the law. Protesters were also given several opportunities to voluntarily leave the encampment with their belongings and avoid consequences. Campus leaders had described potential consequences immediately before^[21] and after^[22] the encampment was erected.

On May 1, 2024, Mnookin authorized campus police to dismantle the encampment.^[23] Campus police were assisted by the Madison Police Department, the Dane County Sheriff's Office, and Wisconsin State Patrol. The removal of the encampment resulted in 34 arrests of students, professors and community members. Most protestors were released without citation, though four were booked at the county jail.^[24] The tactic garnered several responses. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester praised Mnookin on X, "for doing the right thing by enforcing campus policies and standing up to the unruly mob."^[24] Others condemned the police presence. Madison Alderman MGR Govindarajan responded by saying that the "actions seen this morning were beyond what was necessary. I've heard of both students and community members bleeding, clothes being torn, with safety being just an afterthought." Govindarajan represents the UW campus area on City Council.^[25]

Dahlia Saba, of the UW-Madison Students for Justice in Palestine, responded to the arrests with the following words, as quoted in the local newspaper The Capital Times:

We will be prepared to continue fighting for what we believe, which is that UW-Madison should divest from apartheid in Israel... It's shameful that the University of Wisconsin-Madison would rather use violence against their community, against their students, against their faculty, against their staff, than negotiate with us in good faith.^[24]

Following the arrests, protesters reinstated the camp and additional in-person negotiations commenced between students and campus administration. Mnookin met with student protest leaders on May 2,^[26] and a settlement was reached to end the encampment on May 10^[27] after several rounds of negotiations.

Following the resignation of Minouche Shafik related to the April 2024 Gaza Solidarity Encampment and broader protest movement at Columbia University, and the interim presidencies of Katrina Armstrong and Claire Shipman, the university's Board of Trustees announced on January 25, 2026, that Mnookin would be the incoming 21st president of Columbia University, effective July 1, 2026.^[1]

Her scholarship focuses on the interconnections between evidence, science and technology, and legal and cultural ideas about proof and persuasion. She has written on topics ranging from the history of photographic evidence to the complexities of the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment with respect to expert evidence. She is a co-author of The New Wigmore, A Treatise on Evidence: Expert Evidence.^[28] Much of her work has focused on the problems of forensic science evidence, especially pattern identification evidence like latent fingerprint identification.^[7]

Her research on forensic science was cited extensively by the National Academy of Sciences's 2009 report.^[29] She is a former member of the National Academy of Science's Committee on Science, Technology and the Law^[30] and is on the advisory board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.^[31] She was the primary investigator for a National Institute of Justice project that sought to develop objective metrics for measuring the difficulty of fingerprint comparisons.^[32] Her work on the Confrontation Clause was cited and discussed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Williams v. Illinois (2012).^[33] In 2016, she co-chaired an advisory group to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which issued a report on the reliability of forensic science used in the courtroom.^[34][35]

On April 23, 2020, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[36]

Mnookin married Joshua Foa Dienstag in 1996.^[37] Dienstag is a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.^[38] They have two children.^[39]