My guess, like yours, is that Bren blew a gasket when he heard of the Chemerinsky appointment. If so, it would be hard to blame him.
Still, in the end I have to defer to Hewitt, John Eastman, and the academic lawyers I linked. They know their business better than I do, and they think that dumping Chemerinsky broke the rules.
Still, in the end I have to defer to Hewitt, John Eastman, and the academic lawyers I linked. They know their business better than I do, and they think that dumping Chemerinsky broke the rules.
They are as pointy-headed and out of touch as Irwin, in their way. They blather on about how if it's wrong for a conservative prof to get canned for being conservative, it's wrong to do the same to a liberal. It's exasperating -- who says it's "wrong" to ban a conservative prof for being conservative?
Wrong or right has nothing to do with it -- it's the context of where he is. If it's a college overloaded with conservative profs, no one could rightly object to him being prematurely canned, as it were.
I've accepted Hugh's puffy pointy-headedness for awhile, but I'm somewhat disillusioned with John Eastman. I didn't know that about him. They are both very wrong to criticize UCI's dumping of Irwin.
I had dinner this evening in Orange County with an old friend, who is an attorney and practices in the area. He is as conservative as they get and active in regional politics. He said he was furious that Chemerinsky was fired. He said it would have immediately elevated UCI to being on track to become one of the most prominent law schools in Orange County, and given some time they could raise to being on the second tier behind some of the LA schools.
He described Chemerinsky as being the left wing equivalent of Robert Bork, in terms of knowledge of ConLaw.
He also added that he was "not an ACLU Type", but a reasonable guy.