Professor Ryan, one of the nation's leading education law scholars, will discuss his new book, Five Miles Away: A World Apart. Exhaustively researched and elegantly written by, Five Miles Away, A World Apart ties together, like no other book, a half-century's worth of education law and politics into a coherent, if disturbing, whole. It will be of interest to anyone who has ever wondered why our schools are so unequal and whether there is anything to be done about it.
Jim Ryan joined the University of Virgina Law School faculty in 1998 after completing a two-year public interest fellowship in Newark, N.J. He teaches law and education, constitutional law, land use law, local government law and torts. His scholarship focuses primarily on law and educational opportunity, and he has authored or co-authored articles on school finance, school desegregation, school choice, school governance, a right to preschool and the No Child Left Behind Act, which have appeared in the Harvard, Yale, Michigan, Virginia, California and New York University law reviews.
Ryan received his A.B. from Yale University and his J.D. from Virginia. After graduating from the Law School in 1992, Ryan first clerked for J. Clifford Wallace, then-Chief Judge of the 9th Circuit, and then for William H. Rehnquist, the late Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.