*Updated December 4, 7:38 a.m.*

Law Center Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff was appointed U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees, the university announced Tuesday.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is an organization based in Geneva that works on behalf of refugees on a global scale.

“[The UNHCR] strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another state, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country,” according to the UNHCR’s Web site.

[According to the press release](https://www.law.georgetown.edu/news/releases/December.2.2009TAA.html), Aleinikoff will continue to serve as dean of the Law Center, where he has been a faculty member since 1997, until late January.

University President John J. DeGioia will work over the next several weeks to find and appoint an interim dean and to coordinate the search for Aleinikoff’s successor, the press release said.

Aleinikoff was appointed dean of the Law Center in 2004. In recent years, he helped found the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, and established the Center for Transnational Legal Studies in London.

“This appointment to the United Nations follows Alex’s long history of commitment to global justice,” DeGioia said in an e-mail to the campus community. “Alex has become a close friend and a colleague to many of us. I look forward to being together with many of you in the months ahead as we find ways to celebrate and thank him for his contributions to Georgetown.”

Aleinikoff will begin his post on Feb. 1.”