Students Request 'Responsive' Law Dean

The Law School Governance Committee cites responsiveness as the most frequently mentioned quality for the next Law dean in a report on student opinion submitted to President Pusey and President-elect Bok last week.

The eight-page report-which will be released today-notes that "the most frequently cited quality for the deanship was responsiveness" but adds that "by far the most frequently discussed question... was whether the new dean should be chosen from the present Faculty or from outside."

"Quite a few students argued for an outsider, as an important qualification in its own right, and some for a person outside the legal education field entirely," the report says.

Pusey and Bok received the report on Wednesday, nearly a month after its original end-of-February deadline.

The Governance Committee-which is comprised of ten student and three faculty members-will meet sometime this week with Bok, and possibly with Pusey, to discuss the report and "the views of students on the specific qualities" of prospective candidates.

'Three Ways'-Chayes

"I see this report as being important in three ways," Abram J. Chayes '43, chairman of the Governance Committee said Friday. "First, it represents the first official recognition of the importance of student views, second, a process was established for gathering these views; and third, the process acted in a responsible manner."

The committee's report is appended by a list of 44 names suggested by students as persons who should be considered for dean.

Aside from the obvious candidates-such as Albert M. Sacks, acting dean of the Law School-the list includes less likely deans such as Cesar Chavez, William Kunstler and Ralph Nader. There are no women on the list, which is made up of 34 professors, three judges and seven "outsiders."

Other qualities for the next dean mentioned in the report include scholarship and academic standing; firmness and strength of conviction; the willingness to defend unpopular positions; and the ability to withstand the pressures of confrontation and divisive tactics.

The committee concludes that the question of naming a dean from outside the Law School "was addressed as an aspect of the problem of generating change," and was based on grounds "that this was the only way to secure a fresh perspective on the problems of the school."

"I certainly think this was a useful exorcise," Chayes said. "By recording the views of students, the report makes it harder for those views to be disregarded."

"The report also makes clear thatwhile some may hold the view that things are going along swimmingly at the Law School, for a significant part of the student population this is simply not so," he said.

In a section entitled "Summary of Views on Issues of Legal Education," the report states that "although it is hard to judge the reliability of the sample before the committee, it must be said that a great majority of comments . . . expressed in some degree a dissatisfaction with one or more as pects of the Law School as it is."

Criticism of the present Law curriculum was directed, the report says, at the school's emphasis on corporate law; "an overemphasis on socratic technique and case method" in teaching; the small size and homogeneity of the Faculty; the limited participation of students in Law School decision-making; and the slight representation of women and minority groups in the student body and Faculty.

The committee concludes the section by saying these views "seem . . . to be held by a significant segment of the student body, and if some within it may be dissenters by temperament, it includes many reflective students as well."

However, the report checks itself by noting that "by no means all of the responses expressed a desire for significant change." It mentions that a number of students stressed the importance of maintaining the high academic standards of the school.

Also noting "financial constraints on some kinds of change," the committee points up the fact that "there was no broad agreement on proposals for cure."

The Governance Committee report is the culmination of a month-long sampling of Law students on the issue of finding a new dean.

The sampling drew from a series of open meetings, which included a symposium entitled "The Future of Legal Education at Harvard," a questionnaire distributed in Law School classes and answered by about 60 students; and individual meetings with ten student organizations at the school.