Alexandra Fay grew up in Oakland, California. The diversity and history of her hometown inspired Fay’s interest in politics and social justice. Fay learned about immigrant communities’ political organization and the local Black Power movement at an early age. In 2018, she left to attend Columbia University, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in history.
Her interest in the legal field developed as Fay saw how lawyers can support people. Attorneys in every area and stage of their career, from legal aid lawyers to public defenders, have the tools and access to make meaningful change, Fay noted, and it was that coupled with her passion for justice that inspired her to attend law school. In 2022, she graduated from Yale Law School and, in 2023, was admitted to the State Bar of California.
Fay did not know that Indigenous law would be her specialization, but an impactful summer internship, one where she lived and worked in a small Inupiat village above the Arctic Circle in Alaska, changed all that and the experience left her wanting to become a tribal attorney. Instead, thanks to the University of California – Los Angeles’ Native Nations Law & Policy Center and a Milanovich Fellowship, she was pulled into academia and Native American law research.
“Federal Indian law is a rapidly developing field. Here in Oklahoma, we’re going to see more jurisdictional disputes coming out of the groundbreaking McGirt v. Oklahoma decision,” said Fay, who joined the faculty at The University of Tulsa’s College of Law in August. “I hope we’re also going to see a new era of cooperation as states and municipalities recognize that they have to work together with tribes to achieve good governance in the 21st century.”
Teaching, for Fay, is all about preparing students to do good work. She gained classroom experience early in her career as an undergraduate teaching fellow at Columbia University, as well as through a Fulbright Fellowship, which took her to Penza State University in Russia to teach classes in English language and American culture. She chose academia rather than professional practice because of the dynamic intellectual community and colleagues she interacts with daily – all of which she is excited to find at UTulsa.
“The University of Tulsa’s College of Law is the only law school in the country located on a reservation. It has great history of training amazing Indian law attorneys and leaders. When the law school invited me to an interview, I was working on a paper about McGirt and criminal jurisdiction in Oklahoma. It seemed like a perfect match! This is where the law is really developing. There’s nowhere better for my research,” she said.