State Will Investigate Charge at Law School

The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination has decided to investigate the possibility of religious prejudice in the practices of the Law School's Placement Office.

The commission will send a field representative to Cambridge "for one or two days" to look into charges that Jewish students are being discriminated against when interviewed by law firms, Walter H. Nolan, the M.C.A.D.'s executive secretary said yesterday.

It is the first time the state has ever undertaken such an investigation of Harvard, Dean Erwin N. Griswold said yesterday. "We will welcome an investigation. It is, and always has been, our policy not to discriminate and I think we can be proud of our record in this area," he declared.

An article in the Law School's student newspaper, the Law Record, prompted the study. In the article, Miss Eleanor Appel, director of the Placement Office, said that "the Jewish boy is slower to receive an offer than his twin who is not Jewish."

The article was forwarded to Nolan by Henry Spitz of the New York Commission of Human Rights, and the M.C.A.D. voted Friday to look into the matter.

Doubts Legal Action

Even if irregularities were discovered, Nolan doubted "very very much" that any legal action would be taken against the Law School. The M.C.A.D. would probably only make recommendations to improve the situation, he said.

Since the Law Record article appeared, the Law School has taken several un-official steps to study the Placement Office. A committee, formed by representatives from different Law School undergraduate organizations, has begun to look into the problem of discrimination. Specifically, it will seek to discover whether any law firms do discriminate, to find out how other law schools have handled the problem, and to make re-commendations.

This committee's proposals will probably go to a special subcommittee of a student-Faculty committee established last fall, according to Keith Roberts 2L, a member of the subcommittee.

The subcommittee is making a more through study of the Placement's Office's role in the Law School. Their report, however, is at least two months away.

There appear to be at least two separate questions involved in the study of possible discrimination in the Placement Office: how much -- if at all -- do the firms themselves discriminate; and how much does the Placement Office either accept, condone, or aid any existing discriminatory practices.

Both questions, in the view of many at the Law School, are very difficult to answer conclusively. Dean Griswold said, for example, that it is "hard to tell [whether a firm is discriminating] as a matter of fact -- especially in the case of smaller firms."

A number of different proposals have been forwarded privately for changing the current situation. It has been suggested that law firms coming to interview at Harvard be required to sign an oath saying that they do not discriminate, or, short of this step, that Harvard send a stronger anti-discriminatory statement to these law firms than it does now.

Another idea would impose more supervision on the Placement Office. The office does not have a Faculty committee to oversee its operations, and, under this proposal, such a committee would be set up