California Law School Withdraws Offer to Liberal Law Professor

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prominent legal scholar slated to be founding dean at University of California, Irvine's new law school, had his offer withdrawn because of controversy created by his well-known liberal views, Chemerinsky said Wednesday.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.

The "Disruptive" Buzzcut

It's rare for me to agree with a Pandagon story, but I have to say that this is another of those "administration run amok" stories.

7th grader Derek Jackson says he is back in his normal classes today following his placement in in-school-suspension for having a haircut that was too short; something the school says was both a violation of the school dress-code and a distraction.
Derek’s mother, Amanda, says she met with Bailey Middle School Principal Dr. Julia Fletcher, and Dr. Fletcher told her that the issue was “not worth the fight”.

Leaders of Austin’s NAACP are convinced the suspension of Derek Jackson is racially motivated. Nelson Linder with the NAACP says there’s no other reason he can think of why a 7th grader would get in-school suspension for having hair that’s too short.

“We think that Derek is just a metaphor for how people are treated,” he said. “For whatever reason, African-Americans are put under very high scrutiny…gang issues, all kind of what I call ‘racist projections’. So I think when a black kid has a haircut that they might think is inappropriate, you’re seeing phobias from people.

I disagree that this is a race thing, although I'm sure there are some racists who don't like buzzcuts on black kids. Plus, the NAACP does have a vested interest in making everything about race.

In this instance, though, I consider this to be more administrative stupidity than racism. After all, I already wrote about the 13-year-old girl arrested for writing on a desk. And we all know about the first grader suspended because he kissed a girl. So, why not put this boy's haircut in the same category?

The truth is, most school administrations' "zero tolerance" policies--really a cop out so teachers don't have to use any actual judgement--force teachers and administrators to inflict harsh punishments on children for relatively minor offenses. Let's face it; it's much easier to ban all jewelry rather than determine how much is too much. It's easier to disallow rolling backpacks than to make children behave properly with them.

These harsh applications of blanket rules poorly serve our children. Maybe the teachers and administrators in Derek's school should be more concerned about his studies than his haircut.

More Freedom of Expression on College Campuses

Yesterday, I wrote the student at Hamline University who was booted for suggesting that if the university wanted to make its campus safer for students, they should allow people to carry their own licensed weapons. The school told the student he needed psychological treatment (which would have been part of his record forever) in order to return to the school. They even put armed guards outside his classrooms to ensure he didn't return to class.

Now Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has taken up the cause of two Tufts University students who are being punished for exercising their freedom of expression.

Showing profound disregard for free speech and freedom of the press, Tufts University has found a conservative student publication guilty of harassment and creating a hostile environment for publishing political satire. Despite explicitly promising to protect controversial and offensive expression in its policies, the Tufts Committee on Student Life decided yesterday to punish the student publication The Primary Source (TPS) for printing two articles that offended African-American and Muslim students on campus. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which has spearheaded the defense of TPS, is now launching a public campaign to oppose Tufts’ outrageous actions.

"We now know that Tufts’ promises of free expression are hollow," FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. "By punishing political expression—the type of expression at the very core of the right to free speech—Tufts has shown that, in spite of its promises, it has no regard for its students’ fundamental rights. Such hypocrisy must not go unchallenged."

Last December, TPS published a satirical Christmas carol entitled "Oh Come All Ye Black Folk." Although TPS runs a Christmas carol parody every year, December’s carol sparked controversy on campus because it harshly lampooned race-based admissions. Realizing that the carol offended large portions of the Tufts community, TPS published an apology on December 6, 2006. Four months later, however, a student filed charges alleging that the carol constituted "harassment" and created a "hostile environment." Other students filed similar charges in response to TPS’ April 11, 2007 piece entitled "Islam—Arabic Translation: Submission," a satirical advertisement that ridiculed Tufts’ "Islamic Awareness Week" by highlighting militant Islamic terrorism.

The two complaints were consolidated for a hearing before the university’s Committee on Student Life on April 30, 2007. Yesterday, the Committee issued a decision holding that TPS had violated the university’s harassment policy by publishing the two pieces. The Committee found that the carol "targeted [black students] on the basis of their race, subjected them to ridicule and embarrassment, intimidated them, and had a deleterious impact on their growth and well-being on campus." The Committee also held that the parody of Islamic Awareness Week "targeted members of the Tufts Muslim community for harassment and embarrassment, and that Muslim students felt psychologically intimidated by the piece."

"By issuing this decision, Tufts University is saying that its students are not strong enough to live with freedom," Lukianoff said. "Satire and parody are so strongly protected by the U.S. Constitution precisely because they may offend or provoke. Tufts knows that the proper cure for speech one dislikes is more speech—but it has instead elected to meet controversial speech with repression. We call on the president of Tufts to overturn this unwise and illiberal decision."

Yep, that free speech thing is tricky. It might actually offend some people.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh adds this:

My first reaction was — welcome to America: We're allowed to intentionally put a negative spin on religion here, just as we're allowed to criticize any other ideology. There should be nothing flabbergasting about open debate in America, debate which doesn't assume that any religious belief is sacrosanct.

Not at Tufts!