Reports that Jewish students at Harvard Law School face bias when they apply at the college job placement office is under investigation by the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, it was revealed here.
Walter Nolan, the commission’s executive secretary, said the investigation would be extended to other law schools in the state, as well, although there were no specific complaints of discrimination. School and college placement offices, he said, are, in effect, employment agencies and perhaps “discriminatory judgment” had been exercised in servicing applications.
This possibility, Mr. Noland said, had been brought to the attention of the Massachusetts commission by the New York State Commission on Human Rights, on the basis of an article in a recent issue of the Harvard Law Record. The publication quoted Eleanor Appel, head of the Harvard Law School placement office, who told an interviewer that “there is no question but that the Jewish boy is slower to receive an offer than a Gentile applicant.” She said she always reminds employers that state law forbids questions about religion.
Dean Erwin N. Griswold, of the Harvard Law School, a member of the Federal Civil Rights Commission, said that, while school policy was nondiscriminatory, he had appointed a faculty-student committee to make recommendations to spell out policies for future guidance.
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