Harvard Law Review editors and Law School administrators and faculty responded angrily late month to an article in The Wall Street Journal which blamed the Review's affirmative action policy for the controversy currently engulfing the organization.

The dispute over the article which according to Review editors contained "numerous misstatements and mischaracterizations," comes in the midst of an ongoing probe of charges of racism, sexism and abuse of power by the Review's president.

In the article, which appeared on the Journal's op-ed page on November 18 Boston University Adjunct Professor Abigail Thernstrom justified racist comments allegedly made by Review President Emily R. Schulman '85, statements that Schulman herself repeatedly denied.

Thernstrom, author of Whose Votes Count: Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights wrote in part that, "In an affirmative action setting, white signifies 'competence' while Black denotes 'needs help.' "As a result, she wrote, "not even the most correct among the politically correct, faced with assigning editorial work to an untested Black student, can be totally sure that student will be up to the job."

Fifty-seven of the Review's 82 editors signed an as yet unpublished letter to the Wall Street Journal attacking the article's tone and pointing out factual inaccuracies. "There are not predetermined, reserved affirmative action slots," they stated. "Every student accepted has achieved a numerical score that makes him or her more than qualified to do the work of the Review."

In the Journal piece, Thernstrom also wrotethat the Law School fosters "a poisonous politicalatmosphere that is dominated by angry radicals."

Both prominent liberal and conservative lawprofessors attacked Thernstrom's characterizationof the Law School in two additional letters to theJournal.

In a letter submitted to the Journal, LawSchool Dean Robert C. Clark, Professor of Law AlanM. Dershowitz and Tyler Professor ofConstitutional Law Laurence H. Tribe '62 calledThernstrom's depiction "a wildly inaccurateportrayal of life at our School."

Carter Professor of General JurisprudenceCharles Fried wrote in a separate letter that theLaw School "is exciting, interesting and--believeit or not--full of the pleasures of friendship andassociation."

Thernstrom could not be reached for commentyesterday.

Early last month a special investigatorcontracted by the Review's board of trustees beganexamining the charges against Schulman.

The investigator, Boston attorney Ralph D.Gants '76, said yesterday that the investigationis proceeding smoothly but slower than expectedbecause of time conflicts. He said he has met withSchulman's attorney and with the attorneyrepresenting the four Black third-year editors whoinitially raised the charges, and is currentlyconducting individual interviews with staffmembers.

Gants said yesterday that he will not form anopinion until he completes the interviews.

He declined to estimate a date of completion,but one Review editor speaking on the condition ofanonymity yesterday said that Gants has projecteda mid-December date. The editor said that "peopleare concerned it seems to be dragging on."

According to several Review editors speaking onthe condition of anonymity, Gants began theinvestigation the second week of November, when hemet with Schulman and the four Black womeneditors, third-years Rhonda Adams, Renee M. Jones,Shelley Simms and Stephanie Sowell.

According to editors, he then met withSchulman's attorney, Nancy Gertner, and theattorney representing the four women, MargaretBurnham. The three were unable to reach anagreement, and Gants decided to continue theinvestigation, sources said.