UC AT IRVINE OFFERS JOB AS DEAN OF LAW SCHOOL, THEN WITHDRAWS IT FOR PARTISAN REASONS

The recent actions of the chancellor at the University of California at Irvine show that those in academia are not immune from committing acts of gross stupidity. The university chancellor offered the job of dean at its new law school to Erwin Chemerinsky, a celebrated law professor at Duke. But after Chemerinsky wrote an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times opposing then-AG Alberto Gonzales' policy on implementing a fast track to the death penalty, the chancellor felt that Chemerinsky would be too liberal and controversial as dean. The university chancellor then withdrew the job offer.

Writes Sonya Geis in The Washington Post:

"Scholars across the political spectrum protested what they called an assault on academic freedom after the University of California at Irvine withdrew a job offer from a liberal professor who wrote an op-ed criticizing the Bush administration.

"Faculty members were furious, and blogs and editorial pages hummed Thursday with news that constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, 54, would not become dean of the University of California's first new law school in 40 years. . . ."

"On Aug. 16, Chemerinsky was offered the job as dean of the University of California at Irvine law school, scheduled to open in 2009. The same day he got the job offer, the Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed by Chemerinsky urging California to reject a plan by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that would, he argued, make it harder for those on death row to have their cases reviewed in federal court.

"According to Chemerinsky, the UC-Irvine chancellor told him on Tuesday that he "knew I was liberal but didn't know how controversial I would be." The chancellor also said "some conservative opposition was developing," and the University of California regents would have "a bloody fight" over approving him, Chemerinsky said.

"In a telephone interview, UC-Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake said Chemerinsky's politics did not play a role in his decision to rescind the job offer. Rather, he said, Chemerinsky's accessibility to the media made him uneasy "because my feeling was, if we had a problem -- as the last couple of days show -- that it would be huge.""

The university should re-instate its job offer to Chemerinsky. At the same time, it should fire the chancellor Michael Drake for exhibiting little intellectual backbone in this matter as well as gross stupidity in subjecting a great university to academic disdain.