Raquel Aldana

Raquel E. Aldana joined UC Davis in 2017 to serve as the inaugural Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Diversity with a law faculty appointment. She returned to full time law teaching in 2020.

Aldana is a graduate of Arizona State University (earning a bachelor’s degree in English and another in Spanish) and Harvard Law School. She was a professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, before joining the McGeorge School of Law faculty in 2009. From 2006 to 2007, Aldana was a Fulbright Scholar in Guatemala.

Aldana’s research has focused on transitional justice, criminal justice reforms and sustainable development in Latin America, as well as immigrant rights. Her most recent publications include a chapter in a forthcoming Springer book titled A Long Term Vision on Faculty Diversity at UC Davis in UPROOTING BIAS IN THE ACADEMY and a law review article titled A Look Back at the Warren Court’s Due Process Revolution through the Lens of Immigrants as part of the 2019 University of the Pacific Law Review Symposium Volume on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Warren Court. Her most recent books include a co-edited volume titled From Extraction to Emancipation: Development Reimagined, published by Carolina Academic Press and the American Bar Association. Aldana also finished the second edition of Understanding Immigration Law with Dean Kevin Johnson and Professors Bill Ong Hing, Enid Trucio-Haynes and Leticia Saucedo.

Aldana teaches criminal law, asylum and refugee law and immigration law. She has also taught international human rights, lawyering for immigrants, “crimmigration,” criminal law and procedure, international labor law, Latin American comparative law, international public law, international human rights, statutes and regulations, and specialized courses such as the Central American migration corridor and the Comparative Perspectives on Force Migration in the Americas.

Since starting at UC Davis, Aldana has received numerous awards including the American Bar Association Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award, the UC Davis Chancellor’s Achievement Award for Diversity and Community and the UC Davis Office of Research and Policy for Equity Ubuntu Award for Inspiring Social Change. In 2019, Aldana was selected as an inaugural fellow of the Hispanic Association Colleges and Universities’ Academia de Liderazgo.

In June 2018 Chancellor May invited Aldana to join a task force to help UC Davis become a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). The HSI Taskforce submitted a report   forging a vision with concrete steps on how UC Davis can become a premier Hispanic Serving R1 land grant institution. Aldana was also selected in 2018 to the inaugural UCOP President’s Chicano/Latino Advisory Council. She was recently elected as Chair of Latin American and Caribbean Council of the ABA’s Rule of Law Initiative (ROLI) and as a member of the the ROLI BOARD, and is serving a second term to the Council for Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Pipeline. Aldana is a Fellow of the American Bar Association and previously served as the co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers.