Law school's about-face on new dean draws anger
LOS ANGELES - 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.
A highly visible liberal law professor at Duke University, Chemerinsky has represented outed CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and a detainee at Guantánamo Bay. He is a frequent guest on talk shows to represent a liberal point of view and has written op-eds for major newspapers, including The
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 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."
Calls to several University of California regents were not returned.
