Ricks College President Appointed Dean of Law School at BYU

Bruce C. Hafen, president of Ricks College, has been named dean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University.

His appointment was announced by Bishop Henry B. Eyring, First Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric and commissioner of education for the Church. (Until a replacement is named, Bishop Eyring continues in the commissioner’s role.)

Brother Hafen’s BYU appointment is effective on or before September 1, Bishop Eyring said.

Brother Hafen, who became president of Ricks in 1978, had previously served as an assistant dean for the law school at BYU in 1973–74. Between 1975 and 1977 he was the director of Correlation Evaluation at Church headquarters.

A native of St. George, Utah, he attended Dixie College and BYU. He received his law degree from the University of Utah in 1967 and is a member of the Utah State Bar Association. He worked for four years with a Salt Lake City law firm and then was named an assistant to President Dallin H. Oaks of BYU.

As an assistant to President Oaks, Brother Hafen helped organize the J. Reuben Clark Law School and was a charter member of its faculty. After being named president of Ricks College, Brother Hafen continued his teaching and research activities at BYU’s law school on a part-time basis.

The new dean’s works on legal issues dealing with the family and the Constitution of the United States have been published widely in scholarly journals.

He is currently a member of the Commission on Colleges of the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges, and president of the American Association of Presidents of Independent Colleges and Universities. In the latter capacity, he has testified during the past year before congressional committees and the United States Civil Rights Commission on the need to protect independent colleges against excessive government regulation. In 1982, he served in Washington, D.C., as a consultant to the office of then-Secretary of Education T. H. Bell.

Also in 1982, Brother Hafen was called as a regional representative in the Rexburg and Rexburg College Regions of the Church.

He and his wife, Marie, are the parents of seven children.

Bruce C. Hafen