Law Dean Candidates Decline Interview

Four Law School professors considered prime candidates to become the school's next dean recently declined to be interviewed by students, dealing another blow to student efforts to be included in the choice of a successor to Albert M: Sacks, current dean of the Law School, who will step down next summer.

The Coalition on Responsible Dean Selection (CORDS), composed of several Law School student organizations asked views on eight Law School professors to answer question on their views on faculty hiring, the dean selection process, affirmative action, and other issues facing the school.

Four of the eight professors, including Frank I. Michelman, Richard B. Stewart, and James Vorenberg--all considered candidates for dean--refused to undergo student interviews because they said they did not want to appear to be running for the position.

No Way

In individual letters to Michael Borrus, head of CORDS' interviewing team, the four professors said they turned down the invitation because:

* CORDS proposed to interview only eight professors, excluding the rest of the faculty:

* They do not want to appear to be campaigning for the post;

* and, they do not want to participate in a selection procedure different from one adopted by President Bok, who chooses the new dean.

One professor who declined the students' offer wrote that he could not participate without creating the impression that he "was putting myself forward as a candidate," and another wrote that participation in the interviews "inevitably implies an avowal of candidacy that would be presumptuous on my part."

The professors all wrote that they are willing to be interviewed under different circumstances, adding they are committed to greater student involvement in the dean's selection.

Frustrating

Borrus said Friday the professors' argument that the interviews would frustrate the present dean selection process which grants students only the right to write letters to Bok is "hard to justify because we are not proposing they run on platforms, but only that they be held accountable to us."

"They don't want to be interviewed because they are in fact candidates," Borrus said, adding that even if CORDS cannot affect the present dean selection process, it will continue to fight for more student participation in Law School governance.

Morton J. Horwitz, professor of Law, and one of the four professors who ac-