Since April 1, 2019, there have been announcements here at the Faculty Lounge that 10 law schools have appointed new Deans:
- Ohio Northern
- Emory
- Creighton
- Appalachian
- WMU Cooley
- Wake Forest
- Ohio State
- Chicago-Kent
- South Texas
- Catholic.
Two other schools have announced dean's searches and interviewed candidates: Memphis and Touro.
From what I can tell, not a single school made a public announcement of the finalists for the position. (I would be happy to be corrected.) Why is that?
My anecdotal impression is that announcing finalists has been the past norm at both private and public schools. In recent memory, for example, there were announcements here at the Lounge of finalists for the deanships at FIU, Washington, Arkansas, Temple, Oregon, Minnesota, Iowa, American, George Mason.
I asked friends at some of the schools that recently appointed deans, or are currently in dean searches, whether the searches were/are intentionally private. (I made the mistake of using the word "secret" to describe one dean's search, and my interlocutor took great issue with my characterization; fair enough and noted.) Each said that the school's faculty (and staff) knew who the candidates were and met the candidates, that there had been no explicit discussion about keeping the finalists' names non-public, and indeed, many faculty members expected that the names of the finalists would be made public. For some (or no) reason, the candidates' names were not released to the public via the blogs or otherwise.
Over the years, I have heard offered multiple reasons that a school might want to narrowly disperse the names of its dean candidates:
(a) a desire to avoid "embarrassing" a non-successful candidate;
(b) the candidate does not want his/her/their home institution to know that the candidate is being considered;
(c) disclosure is not mandatory for private institutions (some [?] state institutions may be required to disclose);
(d) the school can minimize pre-appointment negative chatter about any finalist, thereby increasing the likelihood that the person offered the position will accept;
(e) the weakness of the finalist pool may have a negative signaling effect;
(f) other schools aren't disclosing, so why should we?
I have heard many reasons that a school might want to widely disperse the names of its dean candidates:
(a) the interviewing school might get important feedback from sources that provide reliable information that is not offered by the candidate or anyone already connected to the school's faculty;
(b) the strength of the finalist pool may have a positive signaling effect;
(c) withholding the names makes the administration appear less than transparent.
I have made no empirical investigation of law schools' current or historic practices. I would be interested in hearing others' views on whether there appears to be a trend toward non-disclosure of dean candidate finalists and the reasons a school might want to disclose/not disclose. Signed comments with verifiable email addresses only.
Comments