At the center of the debate is the fact that Harvard Law School currently decides its tenure offers without going through on official application process.

According to Clark, members of the faculty know the top scholars in the areas of specialty the school is trying to strengthen. After making inquiries about these scholars the appointments committee creates a list of candidates, without an application process.

The appointments committee, consisting of five faculty members, then votes which candidates should be considered by the entire faculty.

One woman serves on the committee, and critical legal studies scholars say they consider her unreceptive to the concerns of feminist candidates.

Two-thirds of the faculty must then vote to offer the position, but the war between crits and conservatives has made this approval difficult.

Students said they were disappointed that the two sides compromised by choosing a package of women and minorities. And at least one professor has criticized the appointments committee for adopting the packaging strategy to pass the white men but not using it to appoint women or minorities.

Of the 64 tenured or tenuretracked faculty members teaching this year, six are Black men and five are white women.

There have never been any Latino, Native American, Asian-American, physically disabled or openly gay or lesbian persons on the faculty. There has never been a Black woman faculty member.

Various law professors have suggested that there is systematic discrimination in the hiring process. Professor of Canstitutional Law Lawrence H. Tribe pointed to the parody of an article by murdered feminist scholar Mary Joe Frug in the spoof issue of the Law Review as evidence of institutional sexism at the Law School.

Twenty-six other liberal law professors signed a letter suggesting the misogynistic article was not caused by individuals but by a larger atmosphere at the school.

In the same letter the professors suggested a disbanding of the appointments committee and the creation of a new committee whose goal would be to find women and minority candidates.

But 21 more conservative professors said that while the piece was insensitive, it was not indicative of larger problems at the Law School.

The administration has argued that there is a pool problem, that there arenot enough qualified candidates who are women orminorities.

The protesters, and some Law School professors,say the criteria used in hiring are unfair anddiscriminate against candidates who are not partof an "old-boy" network. Some professors arguethat a woman must be "twice as qualified" as a manin order to be hired.

In a recent vote, the faculty decided to offeran assistant professorship to a white malecandidate, while in the same meeting denying theoffer to a woman candidate, who was known to be afeminist scholar.

Some professors compare the to the controversyinvolving Claire Dalton, a woman at Harvard LawSchool who was originally offered tenure and thendenied it after Bok called on a committee toreconsider the offer.