Yale Professor Refused Promotion; Controversy Rages at New Haven

Associate Professor Vern Countryman of the Yale Law School, who defended a Communist in a civil liberties trial, has been denied a promotion to full professor in a precedent-making move by the administrative board. This is the first time in recent years that a recommendation of the full board of Yale Law School professors has been overruled.

Countryman said that he will leave the school in June, although he has been told that he can have an increase in salary and more time for research if he stays. Contacted last night, he refused to say whether he had been offered a position at another school.

Yale Law Professor Fred Rodell commented that the School is moving towards "orthodox conventionalist" by not promoting Countryman. A continuation of the same policy will make Yale Law "a third-rate school," he said.

Compared to Wilikie

"He's no more of a fellow traveler than Wendell Willkie, who also believed in civil liberties to the point of defending them even of Communists," Rodell said.

Yale Law Dean Shulman denied that Countryman's defense of a Communist was responsible for the administrative board action. The decision not to grant a promotion was made "on the basis of standards of excellence alone," he said.

"By my judgment, he is the ablest member of our faculty with no exception," Rodell said, however. "His scholarly production has been twice as impressive in quantity and quality as was that of most of the school's full professors, including myself, at the time of their appointment.'

Defended by "News"

According to the Yale Dally News, Rodell's "view has been substantiated by a significant number of law students, who maintain that the departure of Countryman will leave an irreplaceable void in the instruction of several key law courses."

A Dally News editorial commented that "Yale's authorities are almost undoubtedly too convinced of their own rectitude to alter their rush and unwise decision to an Countryman. But let the thought remain with them that the cloud of mediocrity will hover more menacingly that ever over Yale after he has departed."

Countryamn teaches courses in Debtor's Estates, Corporations, and Corporate Reorganization at Yale Law School.