Dean and Wade Edwards Distinguished Professor of Law
- Race and diversity
John Charles “Jack” Boger is a native of Concord, N.C. After completing law school at the University of North Carolina, he clerked with the Honorable Samuel Silverman of the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division and practiced for three years at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York City. In 1978, Boger joined the staff of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he litigated capital punishment cases and became the director of the fund’s Capital Punishment Project in 1983. In 1987, he became director of a poverty and justice program at LDF established to enlarge the legal rights of the minority poor. Boger joined the UNC School of Law faculty in 1990. In 2002, he became deputy director of the UNC Center for Civil Rights. He became UNC Law’s 13th dean in 2006. Boger is also chair of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, a Washington, D.C.-based federation of civil rights, civil liberties and legal services groups that encourages national coordination of social scientific research and legal advocacy on behalf of the poor. He has taught as a lecturer or adjunct professor at Harvard, New York Law School and Florida State University.