Despite Advances, Hiring Plans Criticized

Two years ago, a group of Black law students staged a sit-in at the office of Dean James Vorenberg '49 to demand that the Law School boost its complement of minority faculty members.

Their demands were simple and concrete: a Black woman professor was to be hired by the following fall. A total of 20 minority faculty members were to be hired in the next four years. And Professor of Law Derrick Bell, at the time one of only two tenured Black professors at the school, was to be named the next dean.

None of them were met. And while the Law School faculty did tenure two of its Black junior faculty members the following year, the situation today is little different than it was two years ago. And despite the improvements, many Law School affiliates have questioned new Dean Robert C. Clark's devotion to minority and women faculty hiring.

Last week however, Clark announced the appointments of two minorities to the faculty: Gerald Torres as a visiting profesor of law and Scott Brewer as an assistant professor. Torres will be the second Hispanic ever to hold a faculty post at the Law School, and Brewer will become the sixth Black on the faculty.

But while some students said yesterday that they felt the appointments might signal that the Law School is beginning to take note of their protests, others maintain that the administration's reaction to such protests has been weak and slow.

Rodolfo Rodriguez, co-chair of the academic committee of La Alianza, Harvard's Hispanic law student association, was one of those who expressed reserved optimism.

"The student activism has engendered a positive response," Rodriguez said. "It's made the administration think about these issues and unless they think about them they'll be called to account."

"Clark hates nothing more than conflict," Rodriguez said, explaining that the new dean prefers to appease minority groups pushing for greater faculty representation.

But other members of minority groups say Dean Clark and the faculty hiring committee have taken only the first step toward establishing equal representation of minorities on the faculty.

Tynia Richard, president of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA), said she is particularly concerned with the absence of Black women on the faculty.

"What is disappointing is the fact that [Torres and Brewer] are both men," she said.

The only Black women currently on the faculty is Regina Austin, a visiting professor from the University of Pennsylvania. As with all visiting professors, the faculty hiring committee will decide at the end of the year whether to offer her tenure.

Richard said yesterday that the BLSA "will be planning some activities" in support of Austin's case, but was unsure about the specifics of such activities, which she said may turn into a more general race awareness campaign.

Professor of Law Todd Rakoff dismissed the idea that the recent appointments represent an overhaul in law school hiring policy. Rakoff, a former member of the hiring committee, noted that the committee had to offer the posts to Brewer and Torres several months before any official announcement was made.

Although the Law School is far from perfect on the issue of minority faculty hiring, Rakoff said, the school is involved in an ongoing effort to recruit the most qualified minority law scholars in the nation.