Lafayette officially named a new general counsel on May 30, filling a role unoccupied since June 2023 after the previous holder’s retirement.
Tim Cedrone’s appointment to the position was announced on the college’s website, though the completion of the search had been revealed two weeks earlier in a campus-wide email from college President Nicole Hurd.
Hurd wrote in an email to The Lafayette that she was “thrilled” to have Cedrone, who officially assumed his role in June, join the college.
“It is exciting to welcome these leaders with their immense gifts to our campus,” her email, which references other new hires, continued.
A 2009 graduate of Seton Hall University School of Law, Cedrone worked for six years as an associate general counsel at Rutgers University before joining Lafayette, according to the college’s announcement.
“Tim’s breadth and depth of experience at Rutgers will serve him well in this role,” wrote Audra Kahr, the chair of the general counsel search committee and the vice president for finance and administration, in an email.
During Cedrone’s tenure at Rutgers, the university faced several lawsuits, including one led by a Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-founded anti-vaccine group against the university’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate, a lawsuit alleging that the university’s business school fraudulently created jobs to boost its job placement rankings and one from an Orthodox Jewish law student alleging antisemitic discrimination by law school administrators.
During a faculty strike, while Cedrone was at Rutgers, the university received heat from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression for asking employees to report strike activity. Cedrone helped fend off the claim levied by the free speech group, which was alleging that the university violated its employee’s First Amendment rights.
The Rutgers University media relations team did not respond to a request for comment.
According to its online staff page, Rutgers’ general counsel office is staffed by over 20 attorneys. At Lafayette, Cedrone now works as the college’s sole internal legal advisor.
“Here, we’re a small school, so he’s the whole office,” said John Shaw, a psychology professor with legal expertise who sat on the general counsel search committee. “He is the advice.”
Whether Cedrone will take over active cases or legal issues that were previously handled by outside counsel is currently unknown.
Both Cedrone and his executive assistant, Jody Poniatowski — who also served on the search committee — responded to a request for comment but did not respond to specific questions.
Shaw, whose work on the committee involved fielding early candidates, recalled Cedrone standing out.
“He emerged as our best candidate in the beginning and every time we narrowed the field down, he was still the best person,” Shaw said.
