Committee Considers Weld

A student committee at the Institute of Politics (IOP) last night voted on whether to recommend that former U.S. Assistant Attorney General William F. Weld '66 be made an IOP study group leader next fall.

But the Study Groups Subcommittee of the Student Advisory Committee refused to reveal the outcome of the vote until Weld is notified.

The group deliberated for nearly three hours on the 12 remaining candidates for seven spots as leaders of the non-credit courses. The 12 included Weld, who resigned late last month, apparently to protest the alleged misconduct of his boss, Attorney General Edwin Meese III.

Weld's resignation from the Justice Department last month, along with those of Deputy Attorney General Arnold I. Burns and their aides, have prompted renewed calls for Meese's resignation.

The former assistant attorney general has not said why he left the department, but is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee next month to do so.

Weld, who on Monday will begin his job as a senior partner with the Washington office of Hale and Dorr, a Boston law firm, has expressed an interest in being at Harvard and said yesterday in a telephone interview that he very much wants to be at the IOP.

"I'd like to be involved with undergraduates, so that if selected by the students, I would definitely do that," Weld said.

The Harvard Law School graduate said, if selected, he would lead a seven-week study group "devoted to law enforcement as an instrument of public policy, and the extent to which it is an instrument and the extent to which it should and should not be."

Weld spent part of the day at the Kennedy School yesterday to be interviewed by students from the committee.

Weld has said that he was considering teaching a graduate course with K-School Dean Graham T. Allison '62 on law and public policy and that he has considered researching at the Law School's Criminal Law Center.

But yesterday he said that he was more interested in teaching than in doing research at the Law School, and that he would rather teach undergraduates at the IOP than graduate students with Allison.

In an earlier interview with The Crimson, the former assistant attorney general said that he has never taught a college-level course and last published his work "about 10 to 15 years ago."

Donald J. Ridings '90, chairman of the study groups subcommittee, said that thedecisions of the committee would be made publicwithin the next few days.

He said that study group leaders approved bythe committee must be given final approval by IOPDirector Richard L. Thornburgh, but that this isjust a formality. "It's really the committee thatmakes the decisions," Ridings said. "Thedirector's approval is a rubber stamp.