Dean Landis Will Return to Law School From Egypt Next Month

Mounting pressure of war and post-war problems facing the University has led to the announcement yesterday that James M. Landis, Dean of Harvard Law School, will return from Cairo, where he has been serving as American Director of Economic Operations in the Middle East, to resume his duties as Dean of the Law School. According to a statement by Acting Dean Edmund M. Morgan '02, Dean Landis is expected to arrive from Africa "within the early part of January," and will take up his former duties immediately afterward.

Of the various wartime problems now confronting the Law School, those which will draw Dean Landis' first attentions on his return include the treatment of returning veterans and the placing of them in their proper place in the program, the imminent consideration of revised and enlarged curricula for the already expanding enrollment at the Law School, and the rebuilding of the greatly depleted faculty of the School.

One of the hardest hit of all parts of the University, the Law School saw its enrollment drop from a peacetime norm of 1,400 to a wartime minimum of well below 100 students. Now, however, the attendance has climbed again to a current figure of 160, 90 of whom are first-year students. This increase is due largely to the growing influx of discharged servicemen, who are returning to the University in increasing numbers.

In order to accommodate those of the returning veterans whose college educations have been disrupted by the war, the Law School has announced a relaxation of its formal requirements for admission. Returning veterans will be admitted without having obtained a college degree, provided they have completed to reasonable equivalent of the required work.

Dean Landis has been serving as the principal American civilian representative at the Middle East Supply Center, with a personal rank as Minister. Before taking this position, he was Director of the Office of Civilian Defense, a post which he assumed shortly after America's entrance into the war and held until September, 1943.

In resigning his post in Calro, Dean Landis is abandoning all of his government duties, and will devote all of his time to the Law School. Until September of this year, Acting Dean Morgan had served part-time in Washington as Chairman of the War Shipping Panel of the War Labor Board, but he has since resigned that post and devoted all of his time to his duties at the Law School.

Dean Landis' return is by no means unexpected. Rather it is the result of several months of consideration by high-ranking officials of the University, who, faced with a sharp increase in enrollment, have found it necessary to look to the rebuilding of the staff of the Law School in order to cope with the mounting problems of reconversion.

The physical facilities of the Law School have been largely turned over to the use of the various training schools of the armed forces. Many of the traditional features of the School, such as the Ames Competition and the student Legal Aid Bureau, have been discontinued for the duration. The return of Dean Landis, however, portends a gradual return to normal conditions, a return which will be necessarily slow because of the many problems posed by the returning servicemen.