Jon Wiener: Chemerinsky and Irvine ... What Happened?
[Jon Wiener is professor of history at the University of California at Irvine and a contributing editor of The Nation. His most recent book is Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower.]
The biggest academic freedom fight of the year was also the shortest — and the hardest to understand. Duke Law School professor Erwin Chemerinsky accepted an offer on Sept. 4 to serve as founding dean of the new law school at UC Irvine; UCI Chancellor Michael Drake withdrew the offer a week after the contract had been signed; the firing was greeted with outrage on the campus and among law school faculty nationwide, and was condemned in editorials in the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times; and Chemerinsky was rehired six days later, on Sept. 16....
It’s widely assumed that political pressure from the right led the chancellor to withdraw the offer. But where exactly did the pressure come from? The answer could reveal a lot about the battle lines over academic freedom in America today.
Drake has offered several explanations for his actions. Chemerinsky reports that when Drake withdrew the offer, he explained that his appointment would have caused “a bloody battle” with the Board of Regents. But it turns out the regents had the appointment on their consent calendar, indicating that they considered it uncontroversial and planned no debate — which is in fact what happened when they approved it on Sept. 20.
The problem with Chemerinsky, according to Drake, was not his political positions, but rather the fact that he was a “polarizing” figure. But in the furor over withdrawing the offer, Chemerinsky turned out not to be polarizing at all. Not only was the faculty virtually unanimous in supporting him, but he received crucial support from leading conservative legal scholars and commentators in southern California. Pepperdine’s Douglas Kmiec wrote for the Los Angeles Times op-ed page describing Chemerinsky as “one of the finest constitutional scholars in the country.” Chapman’s conservative law dean, John Eastman, called firing Chemerinsky “a serious misstep.” Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt called Drake’s action “revolting.”
Drake denied that “political pressure” played any role in his decision. After he withdrew the offer to Chemerinsky, he explained that it was “a management decision, not a political one.”
He told the Los Angeles Times that “no one called me and said I should do anything.” But that turned out to be untrue. A group of 20 prominent Republicans had organized against Chemerinsky in recent weeks, according to the Times, which reported that “Drake’s cell phone number was distributed so the protesters could call the chancellor.” A separate campaign was organized by conservative Republican activist and L.A. county supervisor Mike Antonovich, who said he had e-mailed a “small group of supporters” urging them to contact the university and demand that the Chemerinsky offer be rescinded. Antonovich told the Associated Press that appointing Chemerinsky to head the UCI law school “would be like appointing al-Qaeda in charge of homeland security.” So much for “no political pressure.”
Chemerinsky argued that he was fired because of an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times in August that criticized California’s procedures for death penalty appeals. The op-ed appeared the same day Chemerinsky was offered the job. He said (in another L.A. Times op-ed) that Drake had told him that op-ed had made him “too politically controversial.”...
The fact is that we still don’t really know the sources of the pressure that lead Drake to act against his newly-appointed dean. And at this point, with Chemerinsky himself calling for a focus on the future, it seems unlikely we will ever know what happened to cause the biggest academic freedom fight of the year.
Read entire article at Inside Higher Ed
The biggest academic freedom fight of the year was also the shortest — and the hardest to understand. Duke Law School professor Erwin Chemerinsky accepted an offer on Sept. 4 to serve as founding dean of the new law school at UC Irvine; UCI Chancellor Michael Drake withdrew the offer a week after the contract had been signed; the firing was greeted with outrage on the campus and among law school faculty nationwide, and was condemned in editorials in the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times; and Chemerinsky was rehired six days later, on Sept. 16....
It’s widely assumed that political pressure from the right led the chancellor to withdraw the offer. But where exactly did the pressure come from? The answer could reveal a lot about the battle lines over academic freedom in America today.
Drake has offered several explanations for his actions. Chemerinsky reports that when Drake withdrew the offer, he explained that his appointment would have caused “a bloody battle” with the Board of Regents. But it turns out the regents had the appointment on their consent calendar, indicating that they considered it uncontroversial and planned no debate — which is in fact what happened when they approved it on Sept. 20.
The problem with Chemerinsky, according to Drake, was not his political positions, but rather the fact that he was a “polarizing” figure. But in the furor over withdrawing the offer, Chemerinsky turned out not to be polarizing at all. Not only was the faculty virtually unanimous in supporting him, but he received crucial support from leading conservative legal scholars and commentators in southern California. Pepperdine’s Douglas Kmiec wrote for the Los Angeles Times op-ed page describing Chemerinsky as “one of the finest constitutional scholars in the country.” Chapman’s conservative law dean, John Eastman, called firing Chemerinsky “a serious misstep.” Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt called Drake’s action “revolting.”
Drake denied that “political pressure” played any role in his decision. After he withdrew the offer to Chemerinsky, he explained that it was “a management decision, not a political one.”
He told the Los Angeles Times that “no one called me and said I should do anything.” But that turned out to be untrue. A group of 20 prominent Republicans had organized against Chemerinsky in recent weeks, according to the Times, which reported that “Drake’s cell phone number was distributed so the protesters could call the chancellor.” A separate campaign was organized by conservative Republican activist and L.A. county supervisor Mike Antonovich, who said he had e-mailed a “small group of supporters” urging them to contact the university and demand that the Chemerinsky offer be rescinded. Antonovich told the Associated Press that appointing Chemerinsky to head the UCI law school “would be like appointing al-Qaeda in charge of homeland security.” So much for “no political pressure.”
Chemerinsky argued that he was fired because of an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times in August that criticized California’s procedures for death penalty appeals. The op-ed appeared the same day Chemerinsky was offered the job. He said (in another L.A. Times op-ed) that Drake had told him that op-ed had made him “too politically controversial.”...
The fact is that we still don’t really know the sources of the pressure that lead Drake to act against his newly-appointed dean. And at this point, with Chemerinsky himself calling for a focus on the future, it seems unlikely we will ever know what happened to cause the biggest academic freedom fight of the year.