Katherine Broderick. Photo Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

Katherine “Shelley” Broderick, who for the past two decades has served as dean of the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law, will step down from that post this summer.

Broderick announced her departure Monday, saying in a message to the law school community that the decision to leave the deanship was difficult but the “time is right.”

Her deanship is notable not only for its length—she will have been dean for 20 years at a time when the average law deanship hovers around four years—but also for her status among the early wave of women law deans and her political activism, a role many of her dean colleagues shy away from.

“I've always loved the opportunity to have a bully pulpit,” said Broderick in an interview Tuesday. “This is a dream job at a dream time, when we can move the needle toward ending poverty and inequality. I think if we don't do that, it's a lost opportunity.”

Broderick, a past president of the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, announced that students could delay their final exams for a day in May 2015 if they provided legal support for people protesting the death of Freddie Gray, who died in custody of Baltimore police. Broderick said in 2013 that she and the law school faculty had discussed continuing to teach their classes amid that year's federal government shutdown as an “act of civil disobedience.” (It's the only public law school in the District of Columbia, where the federal government controls spending, but it was never forced to close during the shutdown.)

“Generally, I think this is a law school for people who see injustice and want to change that, and want to work toward making the world a fairer and more just place,” she said.

Broderick said she will take a sabbatical from the law school then return to teaching.

She began contemplating leaving the deanship in 2014, but felt she should stay on during the school's reaccreditation bid in the 2015-16 academic year. The school was fully reaccredited by the American Bar Association in April. Moreover, a strong administration and faculty means the school will be in good hands, she said.

“They are all advocates for justice,” Broderick said. “They are real lawyers, great scholars and exceptional teachers. They are the faculty members who go, with students, to Dulles [International] Airport when the Muslim ban is announced.”

University president Ronald Mason Jr. said in a letter to the law school community that Broderick has been a champion of the school's dual mission to give traditionally underrepresented students access to a legal education and to serve low-income residents.

“Under Shelley's exemplary leadership, UDC Law has educated more than 2,000 diverse and committed students, and represented thousands of vulnerable individuals and communities through the school's legal clinics over the last 20 years,” Mason wrote.