http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-uci13sep13,1,1557790.story?coll=la-headlines-californiaFrom the Los Angeles Times
UC Irvine aborts hiring Chemerinsky as law school dean
The constitutional scholar says university officials told him the deal to head the new school was off because he was too 'politically controversial.'
By Garrett Therolf and Henry Weinstein
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
September 13, 2007
In a showdown over academic freedom, a prominent legal scholar said Wednesday that UC Irvine's chancellor had succumbed to conservative political pressure in rescinding his contract to head the university's new law school, a charge the chancellor vehemently denied. Erwin Chemerinsky, a well-known liberal expert on constitutional law, said he had signed a contract Sept. 4, only to be told Tuesday by Chancellor Michael V. Drake that Drake was voiding their deal because Chemerinsky was too liberal and the university had underestimated "conservatives out to get me."
Later Wednesday, however, Drake said there had been no outside pressure and that he had decided to reject Chemerinsky, now of Duke University and formerly of USC, because he felt the law professor's commentaries were "polarizing" and would not serve the interests of California's first new public law school in 40 years. News of Drake's decision quickly made its way through academic and legal circles nationally, where it came under criticism from liberal and conservative scholars who said Chemerinsky was being unfairly penalized.
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Douglas W. Kmiec, a prominent conservative constitutional law professor at Pepperdine Law School in Malibu, called the development "a tremendous setback for UC Irvine. It is a profound mistake in my judgment to have obtained the services of one of the most respected, most talented teachers of the Constitution in the United States and to turn him away on the specious ground that he is too liberal or too progressive. That is a betrayal of everything a law school should stand for."
Chemerinsky and Drake agreed the new dean's dismissal was motivated in part by an Aug. 16 opinion article in The Times, the same day the job offer was made. In it, Chemerinsky asserted that Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales was "about to adopt an unnecessary and mean-spirited regulation that will make it harder for those on death row to have their cases reviewed in federal court."
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