The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson urged the Law School yesterday not to discipline the nine students involved in a recent sit-in protesting the school's record on women and minority faculty hiring.

In a letter sent to Dean Robert C. Clark and the Law School administrative board, Jackson compared the students' overnight sit-in outside Clark's Griswold Hall office to civil rights protests of the 1960s.

Dissatisfaction with the Law School's hiring appointment of four white men to tenured positions.

Last Friday, the faculty voted to offer a tenure-track professorship to a white man, but the declined to offer a similar position to a white woman.

Of the Law School's 64 tenured or tenure-track faculty members, six are Black men and five are white women.

Jackson spoke in support of efforts to diversify the faculty last month and promised he would stay involved in the protests.

In his letter to Clark, Jackson said the sit-in participants, known as the "Griswold Nine," should be praised not punished.

"They should be honored for their commitment to building a multiracial and pluralist society," the letter read. "They, like their predecessors, represent the best of American youth."

The students protesters are members of the Coalition for Civil Rights, a Law School student organization composed of six minority students groups and the Women's Law Associ- ation.

Four other students also face reprimand orsuspension for participating in a sit-in insidethe office of Carter Professor of generalJurisprudence Charles Fried last month.

More than 200 students and 100 professors andlegal scholars have signed petitions supportingthe "Griswold Nine."

Jackson said the Law School is taking too harsha stand against the protesters. Their civildisobedience, he said is excusable because theirmessage is so important.

"Harvard Law school must not align itself withthe authoritarian practices and responses ofBritishrun India or the segregated south. It mustseek higher ground in 1992," he wrote.

Jackson also condemned the Law school hiringrecord nothing that its tenured faculty has neverincluded a Latino an Asian-American an openly gayor lesbian person or a person with a physicaldisability.

"This is an injustice for which we all musttake a measure of personal responsibility,"Jackson said. "IT is beneath the dignity ofHarvard Law school to say that it cannot findqualified candidates from any of these groups."

Some students interviewed yesterday said theythink Jackson's fiery support may be related tohis close friendship with Weld professor of theLaw Derrick A. Bell Jr.

Bell, the school's first Black faculty members,took an unpaid leave of absence in April, 1990,and said he would not return until the Law schooltenures a Black woman.

Juny L. Francois a first-year student,attributed Jackson's support "to the RainbowCoalition and the recognition that our movement isa movement for multi-culturalism."

Students said they believe Jackson may helpconvince the Law School administration that theirstruggle is not simply the fight of a fewdisgruntled students.

"The way the things work you've got to havename and reputation," Francois said. "We have thesupport of the professors, attorney, alumni andJesse Jackson."

But the students said they are not convincedthat Jackson letter will persuade Clark to dropthe ad board charges.

Clark could not be reached for commentyesterday