The president of the Association of American Law Schools will speak about higher education issues at Indiana University Maurer School of Law at noon Feb. 7 in the law school’s moot courtroom at 211 S. Indiana Ave., Bloomington. The event is free and open to the public.

Michael A. Olivas, the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair of Law and director of the Institute of Higher Education Law and Governance at the University of Houston, will deliver the annual Jerome Hall Lecture. Olivas’ courses comprise business law and immigration, higher education law, and immigration law and policy.

The Association of American Law Schools is a non-profit educational association of 171 law schools representing more than 10,000 law faculty in the United States. IU Maurer School of Law Dean Lauren Robel was recently elected president-elect of the organization.

Olivas’ lecture is titled “Governing Badly: Theory and Practice of Bad Ideas in College Decisionmaking.” Olivas published a paper on this topic in 2002, exploring bad decisions by colleges and universities, including poor judgment regarding faculty hiring and firing, admissions policies that affect minorities and immigrant students, and other issues that pertain to higher education. An updated article on these issues, which will be addressed during the lecture, has been selected for publication in a future edition of the “Indiana Law Journal.”

Olivas has served on the editorial board of more than 20 scholarly journals, including “The Review of Higher Education,” “The Journal of College and University Law,” and “The Journal of Higher Education.” He is serving as president of the AALS throughout 2011. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Pontifical College Josephinum; a Master of Arts and doctorate from The Ohio State University; and a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center.

Jerome Hall, for which the annual lecture was named, was an internationally recognized faculty member at the IU Maurer School of Law from 1939 to 1970. He was recognized for his interdisciplinary analysis of legal issues.