By RICHARD REISMAN
Despite what you’ve read, the law school dean issue at the University of California, Irvine, wasn’t about academic freedom.
It was about finding the right dean to head a law school.
At issue was a disagreement over responsibilities and leadership style. It was a shame it was spun into a morality play by a holy alliance of politically correct journalists and liberal academics.
It was another example of a rush to judgment, reminiscent of the rape charges against lacrosse players at Duke University, where, like here, unfounded guilt was assumed without knowledge of the facts.
On the surface, the UC Irvine situation was ripe for aggrandizing and trotting out of old stereotypes about Orange County.
In August, UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake offered the law school dean’s job to Erwin Chemerinsky, a high-profile liberal law professor at Duke.
That day, the Los Angeles Times ran an opinion piece by Chemerinsky about a plan by former attorney general Alberto Gonzales that could make it harder for those on death row to appeal.
Last week, UCI rescinded its offer to Chemerinsky.
The ensuing crusade, led locally by the Los Angeles Times, disserved Drake and UCI by casting the issue as one of squashing academic freedom and succumbing to political pressure.
The L.A. Times spent three days elaborating on the academic freedom angle and how the chancellor had become a patsy of conservative forces.
“Nationally, it is the biggest academic freedom case of the year,” the Times story quoted a source as saying.
“We are disturbed because of the deep violation both of the integrity of the university and of the intrusion of outrageously one-sided politics and unacceptable ideological considerations,” the paper also reported.
Finally, on Sunday, a fourth Times story ran. It focused on the chancellor’s point of view. It did not run on the front page like the other stories, but rather on first page of the paper’s California section.
The chancellor’s view: UCI needs a dean who can help forge a fledgling law school. Early on, Drake voiced concern to Chemerinsky that “an administrator or dean needs to be careful about public statements and the potential affect of those statements on the institution he or she leads.”
In other words, as “management,” deans have to be concerned about the possible harm to the university when they engage in politics and matters not directly related to their primary responsibility.
In Sunday’s article, Dean Edley of UC Berkeley’s law school said he believed when he became dean that he could no longer engage in the same kind of high-profile advocacy that he had as an outspoken civil rights activist as a Harvard Law professor.
“The freedom we cherish and defend for the faculty and students is simply not available to a dean or other leader in the same measure because accepting such a position means accepting for a time, that the needs of the community one serves must be paramount,” Edley said.
Now Drake and Chemerinsky, who even political adversaries give high marks to, have found common ground with a deal for him to become dean. That’s a good move, given the outstanding talent and brilliance of Chemerinsky.
By all accounts, Drake is a decent, fair-minded man whose own political views could be seen as quite close to Chemerinsky’s. If anything, Drake’s been accused of being overly tolerant of political expression on campus.
There is no credible evidence that Drake has any stains on his record when it comes to academic freedom or of him being a puppet for outside influences. He simply was standing up for the best interests of the university he serves.
The firestorm brought on by the L.A. Times and others is unfortunate.
Reisman is publisher of the Orange County Business Journal and sits on UCI’s Chief Executive Roundtable.
