Overview
The Ethics of Recruitment and Faculty Appointment was adopted by the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences in November 1992 and jointly by the American Association of University Professors in June 1993. It contains the guiding principles for faculty searches. The full statement is linked here.
Following the principles of this statement, Duke has devised a protocol for communicating with candidates during faculty searches. See in particular the statement's section II, D: "If candidates request information about the progress of the search and the status of their candidacy, they should be given the information."
Within this context of full disclosure, departments should respect the wishes, professional needs, and sensibilities of candidates. This means, for example, that once a short list of candidates has been approved to visit campus, the remaining members of the candidate pool may be informed that their applications are no longer under consideration. Likewise, if a short list of, say, four is further reduced to a shorter list of two, the department may inform the two no longer under consideration of the decision. That said, departments may wish to delay final negative notifications until the position has been filled. This is acceptable, unless individual candidates ask for clarification about the state of the search, in which case the department should provide that information.
In all cases, departments or Deans should deliver negative notifications with as much sensitivity and encouragement for the candidate as possible. It may be helpful to prepare standard responses early in the search so that if candidates inquire about the state of the search before the department is ready to make any formal announcement, they can contain what needs to be said but no more. Written samples and telephone scripts can be found in Appendices B 13 and B14.