Tom Campbell has compiled an impressive resume shuttling between politics and academia. But after losing his third bid for the U.S. Senate last year and now taking over as dean of Chapman U’s fast-rising law school, he suggests this: “My career in all likelihood will be in academia. My hope is to finish up at Chapman.” Then displaying his characteristic wit, Campbell, 58, quips that he might change his mind “if they offer me ambassador to the Bahamas.” So begins a new chapter for the moderate Republican brainiac—Harvard- and Chicago-pedigreed (like Chapman Prez Jim Doti, his faculty adviser was Nobel economist Milton Friedman), U.S. Supreme Court law clerk, Stanford prof, congressman, state senator, federal bureaucrat, Schwarzenegger finance director.
And a rarity: Dean in separate disciplines, having previously headed Berkeley’s Haas business school. Longtime Bay Area residents, Campbell and wife Susanne have moved south, selling their San Jose home and buying in Temecula with plans to grow grapes or oranges. Campbell wants to increase fundraising and enhance the law school’s reputation: “I don’t think I’ll be identified with any controversial legal issues.” That would be a break from predecessor John Eastman, a firebrand who stepped down last year to run for state attorney general. Eastman, who remains on the faculty, is on sabbatical teaching at U of San Diego to “give him (Campbell) some free turf” to set his own direction. Campbell lauds him for bringing Chapman into the ranks of the Top 100 law schools. But Eastman, for better or worse, provoked controversy by engaging hot-button issues, including defense of California’s anti-gay marriage Prop. 8 (which Campbell opposed.) “I’m a different person in substance and particular views,” Campbell says. Is the competition for dollars and prestige escalating with UCI’s law school, where acclaimed Dean Erwin Chemerinsky is ambitiously pursuing Top 20 status? “It’s a mistake to look at it that way,” says Campbell. “You could just as easily say we compete with USC. My goal is to make us as good as we can be.” …
More Chapman news: Chris Lee, the Craigslist topless former congressman from New York, got an executive MBA at the university in 1997. Chapman film prof David Ward, who directed Charlie Sheen in “Major League,” told the New York Post “people know in their hearts that he’s not a mean guy.” On CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight,” Sheen credited Ward with dubbing his two girlfriends “the wedge” …
It’s back: $4-a-gallon gas, at a few OC pumps.
