The search process for Yeshiva University's next President has finally been revealed. The process that is slated to unfold over a period of some twelve to fourteen months, will feature three newly formed committees that will interact with the current Board of Trustees and its Executive Board in finalizing an ultimate decision.

Beginning this month, the first stage of the process will commence, with the formal announcement and formation of the Presidential Search Advisory Committee, a fifty- member panel that is charged with what Yeshiva's Chairman of the Board Robert M. Beren deemed "shap[ing] a description of the qualities, skills, characteristics, and experience required of potential candidates." It is this panel that seems poised to bear the brunt of what the Board and its public relations representatives are passing off as true diversity reflected in the search process. Indeed, the members of this group will include Yeshiva deans, faculty, students, vice presidents, and senior administrators from the University and its affiliates, coupled with leaders of what Beren called "major external academic and Jewish organizations."

Yeshiva's Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Morten Lowengrub, will chair the Advisory Committee and will serve as liaison to the Search Committee. This latter group will number some eight to ten members and, as reported earlier in The Commentator, will be chaired by YU Board member Michael Jesselson. The Search Committee is charged with identifying and evaluating specific candidates and subsequently recommending those candidates to the Selection Committee. Beren has not ruled out the possibility of employing a professional search company to facilitate the process, but insiders admit the unique nature of the Yeshiva pool of candidates might not lend itself to a formal professional search.

Following the Search Committee's findings, the process moves into the hands of the final newly formed group, the Selection Committee. The eleven member council - chaired by Beren himself and additionally composed of the Board's four vice chairmen, its Treasurer, Chairman Emeritus, and Executive Board chair, grouped with the chairmen of the Einstein, Cardozo, and RIETS Boards - will "propose a candidate for the next President of Yeshiva University to the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees" for approval. The Executive Board, a pre-existing subset of the Board of Trustees, will vote on the selected candidate, and, due to a recent amendment to the Board's by-laws, will need to garner an 80% approval for the selection, or else send the process back for another round of selection. The 80% figure is a step down from the previous requirement for unanimous approval, a change that was implemented via amendment the day Lamm announced his forthcoming resignation. The final stage in the process finds the entire Board voting on the approved candidate and announcing its decision.

While the process had originally been under fire in recent months because of the uncertainty that surrounded its procedural specifics, criticism from Yeshiva higher-ups has now shifted to the actual search method that is to be employed. Most glaring seems the absence of true diversity on any committee charged with the actual candidate search. From stage two - the Search Committee - through the process's final stage - approval by the Board of Trustees - the dozens of individuals who will be sitting on the various committees will, almost exclusively, be members of Yeshiva and affiliates' Boards. The surprising absence of administrators, faculty members, or Jewish community leaders from the Search and Selection Committees has raised concerns regarding the true commitment of the Board to injecting diversity into the process. "There is not a single academician on a key committee at all," asserted one Yeshiva higher-up. "They're cutting out the core constituency of YU." Beren defended the setup by claiming to have performed a significant amount of research on alternative search processes, ultimately deciding upon one that mirrors that of prestigious universities like Harvard and Dartmouth.

It is this point that ironically disturbs some faculty members and students even more. "It is precisely the difference between the role that Yeshiva's President plays outside the confines of the University and that of the President of Harvard that should be characterizing the process," emphatically suggested one YC senior. Beren acknowledged the absence of true diversity in these latter stages, but pointed to the Presidential Advisory Committee as proof positive that Yeshiva's place at the helm of Modern Orthodoxy is playing a role in the process. What remains in question is the true power that the advisory panel will wield.

According to Yeshiva's Director of Public Relations, Peter L. Ferarra, this committee is not expected to be deliberating on their charge for longer than a month or so. Furthermore, Beren openly admitted that the decisions of the advisory panel are in no way binding. In fact, one member of the 1976 Yeshiva presidential search process questioned Beren's decision to even name the advisory panel as such. "It's a slap in the face…to call them advisory. It means you have no legal standing. Everyone knows that's true, but does the Board have to enumerate it in their title?" he asked.

Nonetheless, Beren himself stressed an eagerness to ascertain the advisement on a number of key issues. Of particular note stood his shifting the increasingly popular question of a potential presidential split to the students of the committee. "[Right now,] my personal hope is that we'll find somebody to follow in the footsteps of [Yeshiva's] past three presidents. If the students feel otherwise, they will have an opportunity to express it there," he charged. Yeshiva College's voice on the committee will be expressed through this year's Student Council President, Pinky Shapiro; Shapiro was asked to choose a student representative to the committee to represent YC, and his subsequent decision to stay in school this coming year prompted his move of appointing himself to the coveted spot.

And so, as the presidential search process gets underway, all eyes are focused toward the Yeshiva University Board in the hopes of determining just how sincere a commitment Board members harbor to anointing a leader of a community and not just a university.