New Ways to Find a Dean

When 17 Law School professors last week signed an internal memo asking the faculty to consider the dean-selecting procedure in future searches, they joined a growing group at the Law School which is unsatisfied with the procedure President Bok has adopted to select the next dean.

Although the professors' memo is directed at changing future dean searches and will not affect the current search for a successor to Albert M. Sacks, dean of the Law School, it calls the present procedure "unsatisfactory" and suggests creating a formal search committee of faculty and students to evaluate candidates for future dean selections.

President Bok, who preceded Sacks as dean before becoming president in 1971, has "bent over backwards to consult with the faculty, and we trust him," C. Clyde Ferguson, professor of Law and a signer of the memo, said this week. But in the future, when Bok is no longer president, "there ought to be full participation by faculty and students in the selection," because the dean is "a hell of a lot better off" if the faculty is formally involved in choosing him, Ferguson added.

Duncan M. Kennedy, professor of Law and one of the 17 faculty members who sent the memo, said this week that "Bok ought to have changed the procedure before the selection of this dean because the present procedure is outrageous."

The current process "denies participation to everybody," and is like "a coterie trying to influence the king," Kennedy said, adding that it "looks as though it is based on objective standards," but is really "an intrinsically political decision."

Bok earlier this month rejected a student proposal to establish a student interviewing committee.

Bok has narrowed down the list of final inside candidates for dean, and Law School sources said yesterday that Frank I. Michelman and Richard B. Stewart are favored for the post. "The rumor inside the Law School is that Michelman and Stewart are the leading candidates, but I myself don't have the foggiest idea who Bok will select," Kennedy said.