Passions for Justice and Teaching Drive New Arizona Law Dean Jason Kreag
Leaning into community to achieve student and faculty success
As he begins his tenure as dean of the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, Jason Kreag’s priorities are clear: promote student success and elevate faculty both as scholars and as teachers.
Kreag’s own career is marked by a passion for teaching, along with advocacy and scholarship that reflect a deep concern for the integrity of the U.S. legal system. He brings a variety of legal, teaching, and even coaching experience to his new role, which he began on a permanent basis in April 2026 after more than a year as interim dean.
A teacher at heart
Since childhood, Kreag envisioned himself becoming a teacher. As a teenager, he wanted to teach math and coach basketball. In college at DePauw University, where he was a guard on the men’s basketball team, he thought he might end up teaching economics. After completing his undergraduate degree, he earned a master’s degree in philanthropy from Indiana University. Kreag’s academic curiosity, interest in teaching, and desire to help others next led him to Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 2003.
In law school and afterward, Kreag directed his energy toward assisting people in poverty, gradually shifting his focus to criminal law issues. After graduation, he was a staff attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights, where he represented people on death row in their appeals. Eventually, Kreag became a staff attorney at the Innocence Project. There, he enjoyed not only representing clients, but also engaging in the organization’s mission of reforming the criminal justice system.
Along the way, Kreag set his legal career aside for a time to take a chance on his dream of coaching. After a year as an assistant coach at his alma mater DePauw, he returned to law and notes the similarities between coaching hoops and teaching law: “One of the parallels is finding ways to communicate with people that resonate with them. Both positions are public-facing and require vulnerability and authenticity.”
While at the Innocence Project, Kreag tried his hand as a law professor for the first time, working as an adjunct professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where the Innocence Project was founded as a clinic in 1992, and at Columbia Law School. The experience showed him what it was like to be a professor and lead a law classroom. He left the Innocence Project and clerked for a year with Judge Jon Newman in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals while applying for law school teaching positions.
A new opportunity
One of the first people Kreag called during his academic job search was one of his mentors, Bernard Harcourt, a Columbia Law professor whom he met while Harcourt was a visiting professor at Harvard. Harcourt and Kreag had much in common, as Harvard Law alumni who had represented death row appeals and were deeply interested in criminal justice reform.
And, as Kreag was about to find out, Harcourt began his academic career at Arizona Law. When Kreag asked what he thought of an open position as a visiting associate professor with the college, Harcourt’s advice was, “You should definitely try to get this job.”
“He knew that I needed to be around an intellectual community that would push me, that would challenge me, that would help me. He was thinking about me as a future scholar and what I might do as a legal academic,” Kreag recalls. As it turned out, his mentor “was absolutely right.”
Contributing to community
Kreag landed the position and quickly discovered what made the College distinctive: a strong and supportive intellectual community paired with a culture of close faculty-student engagement. That experience also reinforced the importance of community: “Because of our size, we have the opportunity to truly know our students. That creates relationships that allow us to support them, challenge them, and learn from them in ways that can be difficult at much larger institutions.”
Kreag thrived as an Arizona Law professor, earning accolades for teaching and service to the college. Shortly after achieving tenure in 2019, Kreag took on another role, as associate dean for academic affairs, working to help the school and its students maintain stability in the early months of the pandemic. When Kreag stepped into the interim dean position in January 2025, he knew he was interested in the permanent deanship. After a rigorous search process, he was selected out of four finalists from prestigious law schools around the country.
As dean, Kreag is bringing his entire background to bear. “I've had the opportunity to experience legal education from a variety of perspectives—as a student, adjunct professor, clinical professor, tenured faculty member, and administrator. Each of those experiences has shaped how I think about leading our College.”
Beyond his understanding of what it takes to lead a law school, his decade-plus at the College gave him a deep connection to the institution and its people. “I care about the College of Law immensely,” he says. “By that point, I knew the College well and felt deeply invested in its success. It was easy to see myself dedicating my career to helping it be as good as it can be.”
Priority one: student success
Kreag’s foremost goal is student success. “Our responsibility is to help students succeed after graduation. That means passing the bar, finding meaningful employment, and having the freedom to pursue the kind of legal career they want—whether that's in a large firm, public service, government, or somewhere else entirely,” he says.
To achieve these outcomes, Kreag will lean into the College of Law’s strong community in addition to rigorous academics and student support services. At Arizona Law, student-faculty engagement happens in and out of the classroom, on campus and around Tucson. These informal ties help students explore what success in the profession means to them.
Kreag also emphasizes the strength of Arizona Law’s experiential offerings, with more than a dozen clinics as well as a dedicated faculty member who coordinates opportunities outside of the college. He says, “I’m incredibly proud of our experiential programs because they give students the opportunity to build the skills and confidence they’ll need when they begin practicing law.”
Kreag’s other main priority — elevating the work of faculty — ties into the primary goal of student success. The professor-turned-dean praises faculty members who are consistently producing impactful scholarship and intends to hire additional faculty members. He plans to build on the strengths of initiatives like the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, which draws world-class faculty who contribute to national and international scholarly discourse while also supporting student success and career outcomes.
“Passionate about the college’s success”
Over the past year as interim dean, Kreag has enjoyed getting to know the Arizona Law community in a different way than he had as a professor. “One of the highlights of serving as interim dean and going through the search process was getting to know the broader Arizona Law community and seeing how invested our alumni and friends are in the future of the College,” he says.
The former college hoopster knows a thing or two about teamwork, and Kreag encourages alumni and friends to contribute their various resources, from financial giving to coaching and judging competition teams to recruiting and hiring students and recent graduates. “Arizona Law has long offered students an outstanding legal education at a cost that makes a legal career attainable. Preserving that opportunity for future generations is one of our most important responsibilities, and it’s something we can only do with the continued support of our alumni and friends,” he says.
The support Kreag envisions extends beyond philanthropy. During his year as interim dean, he was struck by the enthusiasm and commitment of alumni and friends who want to help shape the College's future.
“People care deeply about Arizona Law. They want to stay engaged, they have ideas, and they want to help the College succeed. Feeling that shared commitment to the future of the law school has been one of the most rewarding parts of the job.”