UC Irvine's decision to rescind its offer to Erwin Chemerinsky (who, I should note, is a colleague and friend) is so outrageous and boneheaded that I can muster only three explanations:
1) Incompetence: This one is obvious. Erwin's views are well known. Any remotely competent administrator should have vetted any fears about his ideology before offering him the job.
2) Cowardice: This one, too, is obvious. Maybe a big donor (rhymes with "wren") or a potential big donor, or someone with political power, balked at Erwin's politics and wanted him ditched on that basis, and UC caved. Wow, what a profile in courage. That should make all members of the UC community sleep well at night, knowing that leaders will give in to donor/political pressure.
3) Willful Self-Destruction: This one is less obvious. Suppose you were a Regent, or some other powerful person in California, and you strongly opposed creating another publicly funded law school but knew that it was moving forward. What would you do? You might try to inflict maximum damage on the law school before it even started, in the hope that this would so harm the school's prospects that it would never open. And I can't think of a better, realistic way of sabotaging the new law school than this one. Yes, I can imagine better unrealistic ways, but in terms of things that could ever happen, this one is an amazing carom shot. In one fell swoop, UC Irvine has lost the best Dean candidate it's going to find, made itself look incompetent and/or cowardly, and made it unlikely that anyone of merit will want to be a Dean or even a professor there (unless they change their minds and offer Erwin the Deanship after all). It's hard to do all those things in single move, but UC Irvine managed to thread that needle. When something that self-destructive occurs, you have to wonder whether it was intentional (at least on the part of some). Remember that the California Postsecondary Education Commission voted against a UC Irvine law school, and the Regents voted without debate to reject that recommendation and move forward on the school. It certainly wouldn't surprise me to find out that some of those Regents didn't want the school to go forward but didn't have the votes to block it. So instead they effectively blocked it this way.
Note, of course, that this last explanation doesn't rule out one of the first two. Indeed, all three could be at work — incompetence on the part of those who should have vetted, sabotage on the part of those who didn't want a law school, and cowardice on the part of those who caved in to the arguments of the saboteurs. A trifecta of outrageous behavior.
Related Posts (on one page):
- If This Isn't Sabotage, Then What Is?
- Incompetence, Cowardice, or Willful Self-Destruction?
If I were a trustee (I don't know the UC system, but I'm looking for the title of someone above chancellor), this is the solution I would come to.
Fire the chancellor. Rehire Chemerinsky, who might be willing to do it if the chancellor that fired him were no longer there.
It is unlikely that Chemerinsky affair is unrelated to objections by self-styled "conservatives" had to his appointment. The point being that the "roots" of fascism are not limited to various European intellectuals, the "roots" exist in everyone, including many of those Americans who call themselves "conservatives."
For further support, consider only Bill Donohue's objection to some tasteless remarks Kathy Griffin made at some awards show which got the network to delete her comments from the broadcast.
There is no shortage of people in America who want to silence those with whom they disagree.
With that being said, I think what they did was a disgrace. Although I read a lot of his work in law school and had some disagreements, I found his work to be engaging and it helped me to adjust some of my views. U.C. Irvine lost big time and it is from their own idiocy.
Perhaps, as he suggests, as he started working with Chemerinsky and got to know him, he simply decided that he wasn't the right person for the job.
But I'd bet that 95% of applicants to any garden variety law school neither know nor care who the dean is. Even at top 5 schools, I'd bet that few students were attracted by the chance to be meet their deans.
So, while I find Chemerinsky revolting, I think Drake's decision is more complex and interesting than the critics believe. Drake knew there would be backlash. He may have underestimated it, but he knew at the least he was giving up the Star Dean's power for recruiting faculty and students, and getting accredited.
What did he believe he was giving all that up for?
Certainly, the large money donors in OC would not have worked well with Chemerinsky. Not just Bren, but Segerstrom, Crean etc. OC doesn't have the liberal large money base that LA, San Francisco, New York or Seattle has.
But Drake knew that before he made the original offer. So it had to be things that he learned between then and now.
Personally, I think he figured out that Chemerinsky was a publicity hound without a commitment to justice. After all, he sat in the center of the whirlwind at Duke, and never wrote a word about the gross miscarriage of justice going on right in front of him.
That explanation actually makes a lot of sense. There are too many things that don’t fit with the “conservative donor decided to pull some strings to get the leftwing law dean bounced” meme. For one thing, the donor doesn’t seem all that “conservative” given that his personal website focus on conservation issues* and his campaign contributions seem largely directed to more moderate Republicans like Olympia Snowe and John McCain. For another, this school was publicly known to be focusing on “public interest” law per its mission statement – giving $20 million to a school like that seems to hardly be the act of someone with an ideological agenda (unless it’s to promote “public interest” law). You’d think if he was trying to use his money to gain influence over the school, he’d try to steer the mission of the school to a more conservative or centrist direction. Also as others have pointed out, Chemerinsky’s ideological views are well known and it seems highly unlikely that if that was what made him objectionable, it would have taken this long in the process for the donor to discover them and speak up.
There used to be something called the 72-hour rule that when a controversial story first breaks, it takes about 72 hours for the truth to be known. I suspect that in the next couple of days a lot of people will find that the actual facts are different than what we’ve been told so far.
* Not that the two are necessarily contradictory.
Well, I belive that part.
For one thing, the donor doesn’t seem all that “conservative” given that his personal website focus on conservation issues
He's a development baron in Irvine. Google around some. This is like RJ Reynold's website discouraging teen smoking.
Potentially plenty... given that California funds only about 27% of Boalt Hall's budget.
Money might have been a factor but what rings true based on my experience and correlates with the Chancellor's OC Register comments is this explanation . Do you think the law is above politics? If you do, then EC is a "lightening rod." If you don't, then what do you care if he writes OpEds?
FYI TT, at Boalt I just I loved Prof. Western Addition. Where is he now?
Eugene just posted that apparently the reason Erwin lost (yet another) dean’s position is because he wasn’t willing to focus less on writing op ed pieces and more on developing legal education. You know, the job that he was actually being hired to do.
I look forward to you and every other person who jumped the gun and trashed the regents (who never opposed his appointment) and the donors (who never said a word either) acting like a man and issuing them a public apology on this forum.
But I won’t hold my breath.
Conservative deans never get fired, because they never get hired. The conspiracy is a substantial fraction of all non-leftist law professors in the country. Until law professors are within a 2:1 ratio of politicaal contributions and support, there will be no such thing as justice in the country. Time for a Shakespearean solution!
Remember, hey, that the academy competes with the private sector, which pays more. You are going to have to explain how you would attract better professors by taking away one of the key inducements.
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