Inside Higher Ed: Chemerinsky Gets Irvine Deanship
Erwin Chemerinsky, who was offered the job as the first law school dean at the University of California at Irvine and then saw the offer rescinded, has the offer back. Chemerinsky and Michael V. Drake, Irvine’s chancellor, issued a joint announcement Monday — after days of intense criticism of Drake for taking back the earlier offer. The second offer came after Drake flew to North Carolina (Chemerinsky teaches law at Duke) for a lengthy meeting over the weekend. Chererinsky said last week that the offer had been revoked because his liberal writing about legal issues apparently worried Drake and some conservative supporters of Irvine. Professors at Irvine and elsewhere were outraged that the job offer had been rescinded for political reasons, and some pushed for Drake’s ouster. In their joint statement, Chemerinsky and Drake said: “Our new law school will be founded on the bedrock principle of academic freedom. The chancellor reiterated his lifelong, unqualified commitment to academic freedom, which extends to every faculty member, including deans and other senior administrators.” During a telephone press conference Monday, Chemerinsky said that he would never have agreed to any position that made him feel “muzzled” and that he would continue to write op-eds (the apparent source of conservative opposition to his appointment) although he also was mindful of the role he would have as dean. In several comments during the press conference, Drake suggested that the main problem in the last week was publicity. He talked about how the revoked job led to “more noise” than he expected, and said that the “public nature” of the discussions has been difficult.
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