Minority Law Professor Will Teach Civil Rights

Gerald P. Lopez is not going to end the affirmative action controversy at the Law School.

In fact, his appointment as a visiting professor for next year may further inflame the issue.

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Like the instructors of last month's civil rights course, which was boycotted by minority students. Lopez is a civil rights lawyer. Like them, he is scheduled to teach a course on civil rights Like them, he is not interested in a permanent position at Harvard, And like them, he will be visiting a school with two minority professors on a faculty of 72 and a vocal minority student organization. The Chicano professor from UCLA faces a pressured atmosphere at the Law School, from which he graduated nine years ago.

Lopez says he is not very concerned about the effect of the boycott. "I suspect that being a minority faculty member [at Harvard] carries its own pressures irrespective of the boycott." he explains.

Derrick A. Bell, a Black professor who left Harvard Law School in 1980 to become dean of the University of Oregon Law School, agrees that Lopez will face pressures, but stresses that minority professors are familiar with such obstacles. "Extra pressures are a fact of life for minorities in society." Bell said last week, adding, "You learn that you have to be tough."

At Ease

Minority student leaders said this week that if anything, the boycott should make Lopez feel more comfortable. "I have taught at undergraduate schools where there was affirmative action agitation." said Muhammad I Kenyatta, president of the Black Law Students Association, "and it has made me feel more welcome, knowing that the students wanted me there."

Minority student leaders emphasize, however, that Lopez's visit does not satisfy their demands, which include the hiring of permanent minority and women faculty and student participation in the hiring process.

But despite these unaddressed reforms, minority student groups are not planning to boycott Lopez's civil rights class.

"We are in a more advantageous position regarding communication with the faculty than we were a year ago." Cecil McNab, president of the Third World Coalition, said yesterday. "We're not at the same level of trust ration."

Lopez, one of the founders of the Harvard Chicano Law Students Association which is now incorporated in L'Alianza, the Hispanic Law Students Association was an early predecessor of the current student activists.

Lopez said this week that he found the Law School's curriculum unoriginal and dull, the faculty "particularly good at listening to you and waiting for you to go away," and the school stubbornly conservative.

He is not a stereotypical Harvard law professor. Only 34 years old, Lopez is an active advisor to the Los Angeles Chicano community on legal matters, and is outspoken in his criticism of legal education.

But he does have the necessary qualifications-University of Southern California undergraduates, Harvard Law School, California District Court clerkship for a year, private practice in San Diego for three years, and a professorship at UCLA Law School for the past five years. Two years ago he was voted the outstanding teacher in the eight UCLA graduate schools, and he has recently written an influential paper on immigration law.

In addition, Lopez is among the most popular teachers at UCLA-"intense, but with a sense of humor," Bruce C. Doering, president of the UCLA Law Students Bar Association, said last week. His civil rights course in particular gets rave reviews from students, so much so that it has a waiting list for enrollment, Doering added