This law.com story about how a California law school withdrew its job offer to a liberal law professor raised my eyebrows.
Erwin Chemerinsky, the prominent legal scholar slated to be founding dean at University of California, Irvine's new law school, had his offer withdrawn because of controversy created by his well-known liberal views, Chemerinsky said Wednesday.
A professor at Duke University School of Law, Chemerinsky accepted the post last week after months of talks, but on Tuesday UC-Irvine's chancellor Michael Drake asked him to give it up.
"He said I proved to be too politically controversial," Chemerinsky said in a phone interview from his Durham, N.C., home.
Drake told The Recorder he didn't back away from Chemerinsky because of the professor's views on any specific subject. But the fact Chemerinsky was a "lightning rod" did enter into the decision.
"I needed someone I could work with to build the school, and he wasn't the person," Drake said. "I wish only I had made the decision earlier."
That explanation didn't pass the smell test for me. When did academia start caring whether a professor espoused liberal views? Ward Churchill is only the most recent example of a whacked-out professor. I took an astronomy class in college where the professor decided to tell the students one day that "anyone who thinks an embryo is a human being is stupid." I haven't a clue what that had to do with stars and planets.
I'll say up front that rescinding a job offer based on a person's political views is rank. And after Googling Mr. Chemerinsky, I would add that Cal-Irvine had to know about Chemerinsky's far left views (and, in fact, said they did). My suspicion is that there were some protesting Chemerinsky's appointment and the committee caved. Frankly, I think that's a shame.
Oddly enough, Law.com tiptoes around what Chemerinsky has said that was so controversial. Why not explain what views he holds that might be so objectionable? My assumption is that this is another example of bias (liberal or otherwise)--they didn't want to tell readers what Chemerinsky has said because it might make the nullification of the job offer more reasonable. It's a pretty big, gaping hole not to tell readers what Chemerinsky has said.
So, what did Chemerinsky say that was so incendiary?
Well, Drake said it was because of an opinion piece Chemerinsky wrote for the L.A. Times. In it, Chemerinsky "asserted that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was "about to adopt an unnecessary and mean-spirited regulation that will make it harder for those on death row to have their cases reviewed in federal court."
Seems tame to me.
But he also has said the religious right was the greatest threat to American liberty. Not terrorists or runaway litigation. Not repression, poverty, or racism (the usual liberal canards). No, he specified that fundamentalist Christians, defending their beliefs against the likes of the ACLU (because the groups Chemerinsky complains about aren't the ones who filed suit) are the greatest threat to American liberty.
OK, that's a little harder to swallow, but I still don't see how that puts this guy anywhere close to the "little Eichmanns" comment.
Chemerinsky endorsed an interview scheme for judicial nominees designed largely to keep conservatives off the bench. This is hardly surprising for a devoted liberal, either. His idea (or rather, the idea he adopted from others) proposed that Supreme Court justice nominees explain to questioners how they would have ruled in a variety of hot-button cases from abortion to affirmative action to religious freedom to campaign finance. I don't necessarily see anything wrong with that proposal--liberals will quite willingly tell you that twisting the Constitution to find new rights so we don't have to go through the arduous Constitutional amendment process is perfectly permissible. But after Robert Bork's Borking, no conservative will put him/herself through that wringer. Again, I see nothing outlandish in Chemerinsky backing this theory of questioning.
Chemerinsky also spoke out against a new law which prevented attorneys from recovering fees when they win Establishment Clause cases. The legislation is obviously designed to stop organizations like the ACLU from filing ridiculous lawsuits to have crosses removed from city seals and things like that. But there's nothing in Chemerinsky's piece that is incendiary.
From what I could find of Chemerinsky's writings, he's a brilliant legal professor who is highly respected for or in spite of his political views. Nothing I found leads me to believe that his philosophies are so far out of mainstream legal thought as to bar him from being dean of a law school. And, according to this L.A. Times opinion piece, I'm not the only person on the right defending Chemerinsky.
I liked this post by Hugh Hewitt:
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. I will be astonished if any reputable scholar agrees to take the job over Erwin's broken contract, and many professors who would otherwise have welcomed the chance to join the UC system will be wondering about the Administration of such a place, even if they find someone to agree to be dean.
The L.A. Times piece has more reactions from us wingnuts. I do wonder if those on the left would be defending a conservative in a similar situation.
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