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The Arizona Daily Star will not pursue legal action to force the Arizona Board of Regents to immediately release the names of UA presidential candidates invited for formal campus interviews.

Star editors decided Thursday that the scheduled campus visits are too soon to secure a court hearing on the issue but reiterated the newspaper's position that the names of the candidates invited for interviews next week are public record and should be released at this point.

On Thursday, the UA presidential search committee again declined to release the names of four final candidates to replace Peter Likins, saying the names will be publicized Tuesday morning, one day before the interviews start.

In a letter to members of the UA presidential search committee Thursday, Star Executive Editor Bobbie Jo Buel argued the names of finalists should be immediately released to serve the public's best interest.

Buel wrote to Joel Sideman, board of regents executive director, that publicizing the names of the finalists next week does not allow the Tucson and campus community sufficient time to review the candidates.

"I don't see any scenario at this late date where Arizonans are best served by continued secrecy surrounding this important government job," Buel wrote.

The board position is that candidates deserve privacy until the final stages of the search because publicizing their names could jeopardize their current positions.

"It's (Sideman's) opinion and the search committee's opinion that we are following proper procedure here and trying to work in the best interests of the university and the finalists," said Anne Barton, a regents spokeswoman. "We understand the public's need to know and we think we have a timely plan for giving public access to the candidates' names."

A faculty leader not involved with the search agreed the candidates' privacy rights need to be preserved as long as possible to protect their positions.

"If I were in the market to apply for such a job I would feel the same way," said UA faculty chair Wanda Howell, a nutritional sciences professor. "I would appreciate the respect for confidentiality."

Howell said releasing the names Tuesday is an appropriate compromise between the committee's confidential procedures and the public's right to know.

"We're not only protecting the right to privacy of the candidates, we're protecting our interest in these candidates," she said. "You don't want to interfere with the process until it's absolutely necessary."

A journalism ethics expert supported the Star's opinion, saying the public has "a terrific reason to want to know."

"Unless there's overwhelming reason to withhold the information, the public's need to know should come first," said Al Tompkins, a Poynter Institute ethics and broadcasting faculty member.

The committee has a responsibility to provide the public with as much information about the candidates as possible as soon as possible, regardless of what is legally public record, he said.

"The question is why wait, if they've already made flights and scheduled interviews," he said. "Tell us who's coming so we can research their background. It's a public school, so it's public business. That information belongs to the public as quickly as possible."