The UC Irvine Fiasco

Belle Lettre writes:

Prominent con­sti­tu­tional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky (Duke) was hired to be the inau­gural dean of the new law school at UC Irvine.… UCI began a nation­wide search for an inau­gural dean, and Chemerinsky was one of the final­ists — and up till this week, the cho­sen can­di­date. However, within a week of hir­ing him, Chancellor Michael Drake of UCI flew to North Carolina to per­son­ally inform Prof. Chemerinsky that UCI would have to rescind the offer.

…

But in the wake of this scan­dalous, cow­ardly fail­ure to hire Professor Chemerinsky, osten­si­bly due to his polit­i­cal beliefs, I am embar­rassed for my school. I am unhappy that my school is so short­sighted that it has com­pro­mised its own com­mit­ment to excel­lence and aca­d­e­mic free­dom. I am unhappy that it has allowed pol­i­tics to infect the selec­tion process for the stew­ard of a new law school that was to be devoted to pub­lic ser­vice and pub­lic edu­ca­tion. As an alumna of UC Irvine, I am sign­ing the peti­tion to the Chancellor.

Personally, I have no con­nec­tion to UC Irvine, although I am at a UC-affiliated law school myself. The whole episode just appears ridicu­lous, hon­estly, and what­ever rea­son — pol­i­tics, ide­ol­ogy, money — it seems silly for a new law school to turn down a scholar of Chemerinsky’s rep­u­ta­tion and abil­i­ties (his book on the Constitution is cur­rently sav­ing my rear in Con Law).

In the past 10 – 20 years, con­ser­v­a­tive aca­d­e­mics have attempted (in a post-60s back­lash, per­haps) to pre­tend that the lib­eral estab­lish­ment runs the uni­ver­sity sys­tems. I think this episode might just point out how lim­ited that view is. (I hope so.)