Toronto Law scuttles search after sitting judge (and major donor) criticizes the final candidate on political grounds

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 17--UPDATED

What an embarrassment.  If these allegations are borne out, the Dean of the Law School there will have to resign.

UPDATE:   The University of Toronto's Students' Law Society has written a public letter to the Dean.   And various faculty, at Toronto and elsewhere, have apprently called for an ethics investigtion of the judge who allegedly interjected himself into the search:  e.g, Download Ethics complaint CJC-20-09-17 (003).

AND STILL MORE:

Today’s press now reports [paywall] that ‘In a written statement to what he described as the ‘faculty of law community’… Edward Iacobucci [Dean of the Law School] did not deny that a Tax Court Judge contacted the administration to express concerns about the candidate, Valentina Azarova.’

...A law dean did not deny published reports that a sitting judge attempted to influence a University hiring decision.  Presumably, then, he also did not deny that a judge had found out, or was told, who was on that short list?  (Even the University of Toronto law school is not yet required to get pre-clearance from the judiciary.)  And, presumably, if ‘contact’ was made, it was made with someone.  So who was listening (reluctantly? anxiously? eagerly?) to the judge’s ‘concerns’? It was not the faculty members of the Advisory Board. They resigned in protest.

SEPTEMBER 19 UPDATE:   The media is now reporting internal e-mails that contradict the Dean's public assertions about this case.  What a mess.