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Academic

: The Faculty Lounge

FIU's Public Law Dean Search Continues; Faculty Nix Alex Acosta

By Dan Filler

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Most of us have seen sausage prodcued at our own institutions, but as a result of Florida's sunshine laws, we can watch it made at Florida International University law school as well. This from the South Florida Sun Sentinel:

In a poll taken Monday, a slight majority of the law school's 26 faculty members deemed Alex Acosta "not acceptable" for the post. The faculty gave its most favorable recommendations to two out-of-town candidates with superior academic chops--Jose Roberto Juarez Jr., dean of the University of Denver law school and Joel Friedman, a law professor at Tulane University.

The paper may call this a poll, but we probably would refer to it as a "vote". And the exact vote here was 10 "acceptable", 14 "unacceptable", and 2 abstentions. Those might be meaningful abstentions, too, if they transformed opposition to the level of "slight". Interpretation 206-1 of ABA Accreditation Standard 206 provides:

The faculty or a representative body of it should have substantial involvement in the selection of a dean. Except in circumstances demonstrating good cause, a dean should not be appointed or reappointed to a new term over the stated objection of a substantial majority of the faculty.

I blogged previously on the weirdness of having candidates named so publicly, particularly when one of the candidates - the former U.S. Attorney - might have political aspirations. And Howard Wasserman has chimed in on the FIU search over at Prawfs here and here. Now we'll have to see whether political considerations (or perhaps the President's judgment about quality) ultimately trump the objections of faculty.

FIU is a relatively new school, doing a good job building up its reputation in the academy. On that front, if nowhere else, I can't imagine that Acosta would be a good choice for FIU. It would send a signal about the school's view of both academic values and faculty governance.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on May 06, 2009 (boomark / email).