When Dean Louis Pollak of the Yale Law School announced last fall that he would resign to devote more time to teaching and family, possible successors eyed the job warily. At Yale, as at nearly every other top U.S. law school, black students and militant whites have beset the faculty with demands for liberalized admission standards, more student power and more “relevant” courses. The pressures for change at Yale, as elsewhere, weigh most heavily on the dean, a man traditionally selected more for his skills as a scholar and fundraiser than as a conciliator.
Last week, after a five-month search, Yale named Pollak’s successor. He is Professor Abraham S. Goldstein, a 44-year-old former trial lawyer who has taught criminal law at Yale since 1956. Both as teacher and author, Goldstein ranks as one of the country’s foremost authorities on criminal law and procedure. But Goldstein realizes that his task now reaches far beyond the perimeters of legal scholarship. He wants to reunite teachers and students into the kind of cohesive academic community that once helped make Yale the nation’s most creative law school. At the same time, he has promised to probe for innovative answers to the mounting problems of legal education.
Tough Fellow. Challenges have never been unwelcome or unfamiliar to Goldstein. The son of a Ukrainian immigrant who sold fruits and vegetables from a pushcart on New York’s Lower East Side, Goldstein spoke only Yiddish at home since his parents could not speak English. He mastered English so well, however, that he earned high marks at C.C.N.Y. and later at Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the law journal. After graduation, he served in the Army as a demolitions specialist and counterintelligence agent in Europe. Goldstein later clerked for U.S. Circuit Judge David Bazelon, then became a partner in the Washington firm of Donohue & Kaufmann before accepting the appointment at Yale.
Goldstein’s bearish presence (6 ft., 210 lbs.) and avuncular manner shield a sternness that repels some students. He admits that he is not one “who wants to give everything the students ask for whenever they ask for it.” Still, he has the overwhelming support of the faculty, including Pollak, who says that Goldstein is “one of the great men of American law.” Another faculty member views him as “a big, strong, tough fellow who wants to do things, wants to move things.” As dean, Goldstein will have ample opportunity to do just that.
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