The Chemerinsky Charade
I've been meaning to blog about the Erwin Chemerinsky/UCI controversy, but now I don't have to, because Dan Walters has said pretty much all I cared to say about the subject in a Sacramento Bee column. The whole piece is good, but this is my favorite line by far:
California needs another public law school like it needs another drought ....
Amen! Walters also makes worthy points about how Cherminsky's temporary firing -- which seemed to be based entirely on politics -- was an unjust violation of academic freedom. He's right on this score, but he's also right when he notes, "it would appear that among UC faculty members the principle (of academic freedom) should be applied only to those on the political left." Then he tells another recent tale of an academic-freedom violation in the UC that has attracted far less attention:
Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard University, had been invited by UC Regent Richard Blum (husband of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein) to address a private Board of Regents dinner at UC Davis. When faculty members objected, Summers was disinvited.Summers, former secretary of the treasury, resigned from Harvard last year after a lengthy clash with its faculty over his remarks about the suitability of women for careers in engineering and other technical fields. Summers said his remarks were misinterpreted and apologized, but was forced out of the presidency anyway.
"I was appalled and stunned that someone like Summers would even be invited to speak to the regents," Professor Maureen Stanton, an organizer of the protest, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
The hypocrisy is self-evident. Liberal UC faculty members believe in academic freedom for liberals, but someone deemed to be politically incorrect should be barred from even speaking to a private dinner.
Actually, Summer is something of a liberal -- he served in Bill Clinton's cabinet, after all. But he dared to challenge PC orthodoxy, thus exposing how little most of the academy really cares for academic freedom, let alone honest inquiry.
I agree with my friend The Rev Robert Ross who wrote that we don't need another law school. We could, however, use a school of moral theology.
Or a school of intellectual honesty. Erwin should have had the decency to say "this happens to Conservatives all the time, and I never oppose it." But, alas, he did not.
Erwin fully supports restricting the free speach of some folks (e.g. LAPD officers), I guess now we know how well he likes the flip side.