Recruitment

Many believe that the law schools themselves are not making enough of an effort to attract and hire minorities. "The effort to increase the number of minority law professors seems to have lost its intensity," Torres say. "There's a sense that the commitment to diversity is not there."

"There has been a lull in the seriousness of faculty appointing minority members," Edley says. Harvard, he believes, "is doing OK after several years of unsatisfactory performance."

The deans disagree. Recruiting minorities represents "a serious effort on the part of our appointments committee," Yale Associate Dean Yandle says. Yale currently has three minorities, two of them tenured, on its law school faculty.

"We're very aggressive in recruiting minority professors," Georgetown Dean Pitofsky adds. Georgetown, with four minority professors, is regarded as one of the best in its willingness to appoint minorities to its law school faculty.

Although minority professors agree that an increase in their numbers would alleviate the burdens of committees and counseling, most believe that other steps must be taken to improve the racial atmosphere at the law schools.

"Numbers alone will not solve the problem," Austin says. "There's got to be a sharing of power and a change from the norm."

Other suggested remedies are that the law schools make a greater effort to recognize and promote minority scholarly contributions, that minority professors be given time off to write, and that young professors be protected from being over-worked.

Most of all, minority professors hope that their white colleagues on the faculty recognize and respect their differences.

Carty-Bennia sums up this view: "We'e got to have continued discussions of our differences. If we respect those differences by acknowledging them, then we'll go a long way."