we need to know who they are..."
LAT: 'Fess up, Chancellor Drake
The climate for free speech will remain chilled, and the political atmosphere poisonous, for as long as we don't know why the UC Irvine leader unhired Erwin Chemerinsky in the first place.
September 18, 2007
So, all's well that ends well, right? Not so fast.
UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake — who hired well-known law professor and commentator Erwin Chemerinsky to be the founding dean of his new law school on Aug. 16, unhired him on Sept. 11 for opaque reasons connected to Chemerinsky's political speech, then announced his rehiring Sept. 17 — wants to "put recent events behind us." I'll bet. It's not every week that 695 of your employees accuse you of attacking "the integrity, reputation, and morale of faculty, staff and students alike," or that respected law professors from across the political spectrum call you "disgraceful" and worse.
But even though Chemerinsky has now been hired back, the story is far from over as far as public interest is concerned, for at least two reasons:
1) We still don't know why Drake fired his new law dean in the first place. This would be a mere personnel mystery, if it weren't for the fact that...
2) Drake, while never giving a sensible reason for the dismissal, did tell people that it had to do with the content of Chemerinsky's political speech (specifically an Aug. 16 Op-Ed in the L.A. Times), and to the "pressure" and "opposition" he was receiving from unnamed Republicans. If an Op-Ed can truly get an academic — even an administrator — fired, then that's a data point about the erosion of our free-speech climate that we deserve to know about.
And if indeed there are Republicans powerful enough to scotch the hiring of a well-known liberal dean, we need to know who they are, and how exactly they wield their power, so that we can prepare ourselves for next time, or take measures to reduce improper influence.
And perhaps most relevantly, if a chancellor is just using the chimera of powerful Republicans to justify his own sloppy handling of a personnel decision, we need to know that too, because we're paying his salary....
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-welch18sep18,0,6217945.story?coll=la-home-commentary