Money Talks, Academic Freedom Walks
As legal eagles go, they don’t come much smarter, nicer or fairer than Erwin Chemerinsky. I know this because Chemerinsky was one of my go-to guys when I was covering the O.J. Simpson murder case and criminal trial in the mid-1990s and I needed an astute comment on deadline regarding one of the hydra-headed legal aspects of this drama.
Chemerinsky has become a favorite talking head on cable news shows because of his constitutional law expertise. His politics, somewhat left of center, are widely known.
But apparently not to Michael V. Drake, the chancellor at the University of California Irvine, who hired Chemerinsky to be the inaugural dean of UC Irvine’s new Donald Bren Law School. Earlier this week, Drake flew to Durham, North Carolina, where Chemerinsky teaches at Duke, to fire him because his politics would make him a target for criticism from conservatives.
This, of course, is horse hockey, as Colonel Potter would say on M*A*S*H. The real reason:
UC Irvine depends upon the deep pockets of Republican Party fat cats, who include one Donald Bren.
More here.
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3 Responses to “Money Talks, Academic Freedom Walks”
1) This is pretty baseless assertion.
2) They can hire or fire whoever they want.
3) Even if some bigwig wants to finance his own legal school with specific folks, so what? Its not like he ran Erwin Chemerinsky out of the business.
Sam would have a point if this were a completely independent law school, like the one founded by Falwell. As it operates under the UC umbrella, however,the political whims of the board deserve public scrutiny.and concern.
I wonder what the reaction would be if a conservative were fired for openly stated political reasons anywhere in the coutnry. I hear cries of ‘vast left bias in academia!’
Of much more value than the predictable reaction on the Left to commonplace treatment by the Left of the heretical (a.k.a. non-PC), particularly on college campuses, are statements in the professor’s defense by non-liberals, here.
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