September 12, 2007
UC-Irvine Enters Bizarro World [Updated]
The new law school at UC-Irvine hired a professor from Duke as its new dean, and then fired him a week later because he's a liberal. What a reversal from the normal ways of colleges. I guess they didn't want any partisans either.
Information and links can be found at UC-Irvine Hires, Then Fires, Chemerinsky as Inaugural Dean. Here are some of the comments which give information that you won't find in most articles.
As a UCI grad and Irvine resident, I'm guessing the Chancellor didn't know how thoroughly Chermininsky has placed himself in the public eye. It's not just that he's very, very liberal - it's that he's very very liberal every week on radio, in the newspapers and on TV."Since when did the UC system fire ANYONE for being too liberal?"
Uh yeah -- isn't that sort of like firing a basketball player because he's too tall?His sponsoring of a petition opposing Judge Roberts’ appointment to the Supreme Court based on distortions of Roberts appellate record and smearing him by association for the clients he represented (which is ironic considering some of the cases that Chemerinsky has taken) was disgusting behavior.
Well, what goes around comes around. I'm sure that some good TV lawyer would be willing to take the case for him.
(Our buddy Celeste Fremon teaches at UC-Irvine. Watch out, Celeste. You might want to change your politics from the dark side.)
[Update]
Assignment: Compare and contrast how liberals and conservatives approach this firing. See Celeste's post titled UC Irvine’s New Gag Rule with additional emphasis on the commenters to look into the soul of liberals (if they haven't already promised them to the devil.)
Posted by Woody M. at September 12, 2007 04:40 PMHI GM and Woody,
I was just thinking of posting about this. Glad y'all did. Good lord. Like UCI didn't know what it was getting when it hired Chermininsky???? Right, they were SHOCKED, SHOCKED...! Due diligence, people!
The truth is, Chermininsky's a great Consitutional scholar and a star. If Irvine'd had any sense the would have known he likely would have recruited stars from the right and the left to make for a brilliant law school that didn't have to go through the usual growing pains. (As th LA Times points out, frigging Ken Starr and John Eastman are the new deans at Pepperdine and Chapman law schools respectively. And does anyone give a fig about it? Of course not, because they're well-known scholars and stars. John Woo at UC Berkely, is another matter., since, in a addition to being a legal scholar, he's possibly....well...you know.....in league with Satan---which is a liability, theologically speaking.)
Anyway, good subject for a post. Once again, common sense is in short supply. Hope the UCI folks aren't reading my blog or I'm totally screwed. Fortunately my boss there is as whacked-out, knee-jerk liberal as I am. So maybe we're both screwed. Hard to tell.
Posted by Celeste Fremon at September 12, 2007 05:30 PM
