Erwin Chemerinsky: Academic Dishonor, Academic Disgrace

It's an absolute disgrace. That is, if newspaper reports and blog accounts truly reflect what’s going on at UC Irvine.

In August, UC Irvine Chancellor Michael V Drake approached a Duke University law professor named Erwin Chemerinsky and offered him the post of dean at the new Irvine law school. This week, Drake rescinded that offer.

Chemerinsky is a well-known, highly qualified Constitutional legal scholar; he’s represented Valerie Plame and a GitMo detainee, written numerous op-ed pieces in national newspapers, and participated in radio and television debates. He’s well-respected among his peers. So why did he get the sack? Allegedly, because he’s liberal.

As The Washington Post reports, Chemerinsky claims that “the UC-Irvine chancellor [Michael V Drake] told him on Tuesday that he "knew I was liberal but didn't know how controversial I would be." The chancellor also said "some conservative opposition was developing," and the University of California regents would have "a bloody fight" over approving him.” If an ideological conflict was Drake’s concern, why did he select a well-known liberal as dean in the first place? The Washington Post suggests that a recent op-ed piece by Chemerinsky, published in the LA Times, prompted Drake’s decision to sack Chemerinksy. (the op-ed piece “urg[ed] Californians to reject a plan by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that would, he argued, make it harder for those on death row to have their cases reviewed in federal court.”)

Others aren’t so sure.

Professor Bainbridge, a Conservative legal scholar, writes: “my guess - and it's just a guess - is that Donald Bren may have had a hand in this development. Bren gave $20 million to UC Irvine to finance the law school, which is to be named after him.” Bren is conservative.

But while Bainbridge’s theory is just that, we do know that a conservative LA area politician may have helped muddy up Chemerinsky’s deanship. From SF Gate:

A conservative Los Angeles County politician asked about two dozen people in an e-mail last month how to prevent the University of California, Irvine from hiring renowned liberal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as its founding law school dean, a spokesman for the politician said Friday. Making Chemerinsky the head of the law school "would be like appointing al-Qaida in charge of homeland security," Michael Antonovich, a longtime Republican member of the county Board of Supervisors, said in a voicemail left with The Associated Press.

He was not available for further comment on why he was getting involved in the situation at a campus located outside his jurisdiction in Orange County.

Drake has denied that any political dealings interfered with his decision to fire Chemerinsky. In a letter published on the UC Irvine’s website, In fact, Drake claims, his own ideology is akin to Chemerinsky’s; Chemerinsky just “was not the right fit” for the law school. The vague justifications fall flat. And, although he claims to have discussed Chemerinksy’s deanship with the California Board of Regents, “several board members — including California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles — have said they were not consulted on Chemerinsky and didn't oppose him” (SFGate)

Rather than supporting the university’s decision, several prominent conservatives have leapt to Chemerinsky’s defense and charged Drake with serving a blow against academic freedom. Among them, Hugh Hewitt (yes, the Evangelical Conservative legal expert), who writes in his blog at townhall.com:

Erwin is a man of the left, of course, but a remarkably distinguished and accomplished scholar who enjoys the esteem of professors, jurists and practioners across the ideological spectrum. [. . . .] This is an astonishing and disgraceful episode, which, if perpetrated against a conservative, would rightly lead to a massive outpouring of outrage directed at the university that had allowed such a purge to occur.

Likewise, Douglas Kmiec, another conservative scholar, writes in the LA Times that:

Erwin Chemerinsky is one of the finest constitutional scholars in the country. He is a gentleman and a friend. He is a gifted teacher. As someone who participates regularly in legal conferences and symposiums, I have never seen him be anything other than completely civil to those who disagree with him.

So the news that UC Irvine had selected him to be the first dean of its new law school was welcome indeed. And the subsequent news -- that it withdrew the offer Tuesday, apparently because of Erwin's political beliefs and work -- is a betrayal of everything a great institution like the University of California represents. It is a forfeiture of academic freedom.

Many of Chemerinsky’s peers, both liberal and conservative, have written, in op-ed pieces and in blogs, that U C Irvine--and Drake--should be ashamed. A fine, fine scholar has lost a job merely because of his political tilt. Hewitt is right: if this had happened to a conservative, the outrage would be massive. This reminds me of a story I heard recently from a professor who had attended a Florida university in the 1950s. There was a purge of liberals, and the entire drama department got the sack. While you might expect this of a school in the middle of McCarthy’s Red Scare, you certainly don’t expect this kind of activity now--especially when schools are acutely alert to accusations of distorted academic freedom and the country’s current ideological divide.

Whether Drake made is decision from a fear of controversy, or whether he did it to comply with conservative donors’ demands, he’s indicated his own lack of backbone and critical thinking. I shouldn’t be surprised if he faces a vote of no confidence from the faculty of UC Irvine in the near future.

Aside: As far as I know, David Horowitz hasn’t yet chimed in. I wonder how the activist for academic freedom, who often charges universities of indoctrinating students with liberalism, and who claims that all universities should hire and fire professors according to merit, views the situation?

Update: I owe Horowitz an apology! Two days ago he published a response to the Chemerinsky case at Students for Academic Freedom, writing:

The firing of Chemerinsky is itself an outrage. It is a violation of the principle of academic freedom and should be protested by anyone who cares about American higher education. I have myself debated Professor Chemerinsky, whose politics are in the Alan Colmes mode. Needless to say we don't agree on most things. But Chemerinksy is an intelligent legal mind and well qualified for the position, and his politics should not be a criterion for hiring or firing him.

Wow! Go Mr Horowitz!

But then he qualified that show of support after receiving an email--a comment left on The Volokh Conspiracy that discussed Chemerinsky’s involvement with the Rachel Corrie / Caterpillar case. It’s a bit confusing as he doesn’t indicate what is quoted from the email, so Horowitz’s ideas and the email’s content get kind of tangled up. He also argues that the UC Irvine law school was to be “built around” Chemerinsky. To be honest, I’ve not done enough research to comment on that claim, nor do I entirely understand (without forcing assumptions) why Horowitz objects to this. His final conlusion, that "[w]hat UC Irvine should have done is said, we will hire you as a professor (however reprehensible your politics) but we can't build a law school around you" indeed bows towards academic freedom, but it still limits it because of Chemerinsky's ideology. "Oh, you're good enough for a professorship, but we can't have you as dean, despite your many qualifications, accolades, and the deep respect your conservative, liberal, and moderate colleagues have for you, but we just can't have you as the law school's founding dean.

Still, Horowitz's intial support of Chemerinsky does illustrate that he has some true committment to academic freedom. It's not all anti-liberal fear-mongering (a right relief after that Ahmad al-Qloushi debacle and the Academic Bill of Rights conflicts).