At the Town Hall on Faculty Hiring held at lunch today, Dean Shelanski and Gillian Lester explaining the hiring process, current hiring needs, and fielded questions. A lot of the questions were directed at our perceived low retention rate, which Shelanski attributed our lack of resources. (Though he disputes the notion that we have problems attracting and keeping faculty, arguing that we do "pretty darn well" in those areas). For example, we're constrained (by UC, presumably) in what salary we can offer faculty. Also, in order to get a pay raise, the faculty member has to show that they have an open offer at a higher salary. We simply can't compete in terms of resources or salary with private universities or the top public law schools, such as UMich and UVA, which are "effectively private universities."
One curious thing (or perhaps not so curious given that we're at Boalt) is the affirmative action used in hiring. Professor Lester, who heads the Faculty Hiring Committee, said that she went through and gave every "diverse" applicant (diverse in terms of race, religion, and gender -- but not political ideology, apparently) a separate look, on top of the culling done by the Faculty Hiring Committee. She picked out 14 additional prospective minority hires, in addition to the 50 prospective hires chosen by the rest of the Faculty Members.
Per Shelanski, two current areas we desperately need faculty in: Tax and Business Law
Movers & Shakers:
-
Talley &
Lester will be visiting at Harvard next year
-
Jesse Fried is sitting on a very attractive offer from Columbia
- Harvard has invited
Goodwin Liu to visit next year
- Harvard's Hiring Committee is voting on whether to extend a permanent offer to
Professor Sklansky (Shelanski: they will), and we'll have to wait and see if he accepts (Shelanski: he will)
- Boalt has offers open to Wisconsin's
Alta Charo (who visited Boalt in 2005-06) and Harvard Academic Fellow
Glenn Cohen, who specialize in bioethics and health law
