Law School Denies Tenure-Track Professor Permanent Post

Although four tenure appointments were made without controversy this spring, conservative and liberal faculty have in the past voted for tenure candidates along political lines, and a law professor says this climate has returned.

Professor of Law Duncan M. Kennedy '64, an outspoken proponent of the CLS movement, challenged the basis of the Tarullo decision.

"This was something good deal worse than a mistake--it was an injustice. Tarullo was denied tenure, in my opinion, for essentially political reasons," Kennedy said.

"I think a lot of his not getting tenure was revenge by the right for the school's move in a liberal direction in recent years," Kennedy said.

In the past, the school's democratic process for promoting tenure candidates has become divisive and at times deadlocked. In response, President Derek C. Bok has threatened to intervene in tenure decisions to guarantee that appointments are made solely on the basis of a candidate's scholarship and not for political reasons.

Before Wednesday's decision, no tenure-track candidates, or assistant professors, had been denied tenure since 1969.

Tarullo said that other tenure-track assistant professors who have challenged basic presumptions of the law will soon be up for tenure. "I hope I turn out to be a sacrificial victim rather than the first of purge victims," he said.

The denial of tenure to Tarullo follows the faculty's decision two weeks ago not to give a lifetime appointment to Braucher Visiting Professor of Law Zipporah B. Wiseman. Law school sources say Wiseman was nearly promised tenure when she began her extended visit from Northeastern three years ago.

And in another recent move which strayed from the path of automatic tenure for junior law faculty, the school delayed for two years a decision on whether to grant tenure to Assistant Professor of Law Clare Dalton, another CLS-influenced assistant professor.

Kennedy described Tarullo, who grew up in Boston suburbs Woburn and Somerville as "an activist devoted to workers' rights" and someone who "was trying to change the right-wing corporate orientation of Harvard Law School."

Conservative professors contacted yesterday refused to comment on the Tarullo decision. Others did not return phone calls.

Stricter Standards

Some say that recent tenure denials to candidates who would traditionally have received lifetime appointments reflect some senior faculty members' insistence on stricter standards for junior faculty promotion.

More than a third of the law school students earlier this month signed a petition that requested open discussion of standards for gaining tenure. But although a letter on the subject was read to the faculty by Law School Dean James Vorenberg '49, the faculty has yet to announce whether there has been a shift in standards, and, if so, what the changes are.

Kennedy said Tarullo in his opinion "met Harvard's standards and the standards of any law school in the country."

Vorenberg, as is his custom, refused any commment on the faculty decision and on Kennedy's charge of political motivation in the Tarullo decision.

This spring the faculty promoted two tenure-tracked faculty members, Susan Estrich, and Martha Minow. It also ended a five-year drought in recruiting professors from other law schools which observers had termed symptomatic of political infighting at the Law School with the appointment of Mary Ann Glendon from Boston College Law School and Thomas Jackson from Stanford Law School.