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Professor Says His Political Views Cost Him a Job as UC-Irvine's Law-School Dean Before He Started
Some Background: In its 2006 edition of "The 400 Richest Americans," Forbes magazine ranked Donald Bren as the wealthiest real estate owner in the US with an estimated net worth of $8.5 billion. In a February 2007 article, the Washington Post referred to Bren as "Bush moneyman," acknowledging the hundreds of thousands of dollars contributed.
In August of 2007, The University of California, Irvine announced a $20 million gift from business leader and philanthropist Donald Bren to support the university’s recently established School of Law. The gift establishes an endowment to help recruit and support a nationally recognized dean and 11 distinguished law scholars. It also will provide the dean with discretionary start-up funding. In recognition of the gift, the school, which is expected to open in Fall of 2009, will be named the Donald Bren School of Law.
By Katherine Mangan
One week after signing a contract to become the inaugural law dean at the University of California at Irvine, Erwin Chemerinsky had a personal visit from the man he expected to be his new boss. The chancellor didn't come to North Carolina, where Mr. Chemerinsky is a law and political-science professor at Duke University, to talk about Mr. Chemerinsky's plans for creating the new law school. He came to retract the offer because, Mr. Chemerinsky said, of the professor's liberal political views.
"He told me he was withdrawing the offer because I was too politically controversial, that I'd be a lightning rod for conservatives," said Mr. Chemerinsky, a nationally prominent constitutional-law professor whose hiring had been seen by many as a coup for the fledgling law school.
Michael V. Drake, chancellor of the Irvine campus, did not respond to interview requests and has not confirmed Mr. Chemerinsky's account of the conversation.
Mr. Chemerinsky said the chancellor offered the job on August 16 and after negotiating the terms of his contract, Mr. Chemerinsky said, he accepted the position on September 4.
He said he was excited about heading the Donald Bren School of Law, which is scheduled to begin classes in 2009 as the first new public law school in California in more than 40 years.
He was slated to begin hiring faculty members this year, and take over as dean in July.
The first hint of trouble came last Thursday, when, he said, the chancellor told him that some conservative opposition was brewing. A few days later, the chancellor called and said he was in Washington and would like to fly to Durham, N.C., to talk with him in person. "As soon as I heard that, I told my wife, 'He's going to withdraw the offer,'" Mr. Chemerinsky said.
Right after Mr. Chemerinsky picked up the chancellor at the airport, Dr. Drake broke the news to him.
The chancellor confirmed on Wednesday that the offer had been rescinded. "I have come to the very difficult conclusion that Professor Chemerinsky is not the right fit for the dean's position at UC-Irvine at this time," he said in a written statement that did not mention the professor's political views nor any resistance from others to his appointment.
"Professor Chemerinsky is a gifted academic, and his credentials are outstanding. I respect him greatly," he said. "My decision is no reflection whatsoever on his qualifications, but I must have complete confidence that the founding dean and I can partner effectively in building our law school."
Mr. Chemerinsky said his conversation with the chancellor led him to believe that opposition came from outside the law school.
"My appointment had to be confirmed by the [University of] California Board of Regents, and it was on the agenda for next week. He said it would be a bloody fight, and even if I was confirmed, it could damage the law school," the Duke professor said.
Some legal observers have also speculated that opposition may have come from the law school's billionaire donor and namesake, Donald Bren, who is a major Republican donor. Mr. Bren, who gave $20-million to the new law school and millions more to the university, was not available for comment on Wednesday, but a spokesman said Mr. Bren told him that he didn't know Mr. Chemerinsky well enough to have an opinion about him.
Mr. Chemerinsky said the chancellor asked him to agree to say publicly that the two sides had mutually decided to break the contract. "I refused to do that," he said.
"I'm sad and angry. A job I was very excited about was taken away because of the views I've expressed," he said. "It's almost McCarthyism. It shouldn't be happening."
Mr. Chemerinsky said he visited Irvine over the summer and told university officials he planned to hire a nationally prominent faculty that was also diverse. Although he didn't sense any opposition to his appointment then, "we talked about the fact that I'm a known liberal, and I'd have to reach out and make clear that it was not going to be a liberal law school."
He does not plan to challenge the decision and wishes the new law school luck.
"I'm still a tenured law professor at Duke University, which has been wonderful to me," said Mr. Chemerinsky, who has been at Duke since 2004, after 21 years at the University of Southern California.
His views, which he has expressed in frequent print, television, and radio commentaries, are no secret, so it was unclear why conservative opposition would not have derailed his candidacy earlier. He has also argued several high-profile cases, including a challenge to Texas' Ten Commandments monument.
Brian R. Leiter, a professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin who broke the news about Mr. Chemerinsky on his blog about law-school comings and goings, said his colleagues were shocked. "The consensus seems to be 'Who in the legal academy is going to take the job now?'"
Laurie L. Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, called the contract retraction "a colossal mistake."
"Nobody trusts an institution that lets politics control the institution," she said.
John C. Eastman, law dean at Chapman University, which, along with the University of California at Irvine, is in Orange County, is a conservative scholar who has been debating Mr. Chemerinsky weekly for the past seven years on a nationally syndicated radio talk show. He also thinks the university blundered by yanking Mr. Chemerinsky's contract.
"Erwin and I disagree on just about everything, but when people were saying I was too conservative to be a good dean, he came to my defense," he said, adding that his liberal counterpart has a history of being open to opposing viewpoints.
"I understand internal politics, but usually you vet those things before, rather than after, you sign a contract," Mr. Eastman said.
— Katherine Mangan
Chronicle of Higher Education
2007-09-13
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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