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Chemerinsky says UC Irvine rescinds offer to become law school dean
The constitutional scholar says university officials told him the deal was off to head the new school because he was too 'politically controversial.'
By Garrett Therolf and Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
Just days after he signed a contract to become the first dean of UC Irvine's new law school, Erwin Chemerinsky was told this week that the deal was off because he was too "politically controversial."
Chemerinsky said in an interview today that UC Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake had flown to North Carolina on Tuesday and told him at a hotel near the airport that that he did not realize the extent to which there were "conservatives out to get me."
Chemerinsky, one of the nation's best known constitutional scholars and a liberal professor at Duke University in Durham, N.C., said he signed a contract last week after being offered the job Aug. 16. He said he had lined up a board of advisors for the new school, including the deans of the UC Berkeley and University of Virginia law schools and three federal judges, including Andrew Guilford, a Bush appointee from Orange County.
Chemerinsky said he was saddened by the decision. "It would have been an exciting opportunity to start a new law school. We live in strange times."
Chemerinsky said that Drake told him during a meeting at the Sheraton Hotel near the Raleigh-Durham airport that the decision "had been difficult for him."
He said that "concerns" had emerged from the UC regents, which would have had to approve the appointment, Chemerinsky said. The professor said Drake told him that he thought there would have been a "bloody battle" among the regents over the appointment.
The chancellor's office said Drake was meeting with the university's communications office and was not immediately available for comment.
John Eastman, a conservative constitutional scholar and dean of Chapman University Law School in Orange, who frequently debates Chemerinsky, called UCI's move "a serious misstep."
Chemerinsky has been a professor at Duke since 2004, after 21 years at the USC law school and was one of the finalists for the dean's job at Duke last year, before the university chose David Levi, a federal judge in Sacramento, for the job.
During his time in Los Angeles, he helped write the city charter and has been a frequent legal commentator in the media.
In April 2005, the professor was named one of "the top 20 legal thinkers in America" by Legal Affairs magazine.
UCI's law school, which is expected to welcome its first class in 2009, will be the first new public law school in California in 40 years.
Last month, the university announced that Newport Beach billionaire Donald Bren had donated $20 million to fund the salary of the dean and 11 faculty positions.
Chemerinsky had told supporters that the first six to eight faculty members would be from top 20 law school, and they would be "stars."
"The goal is that UCI will be a top 20 law school someday," he said in an e-mail.
Among those Chemerinsky had approached about joining the faculty of the new law school was Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor, who teaches criminal law and legal ethics at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and is a frequent commentator on television and radio about high-profile trials.
Levenson said she was deeply disturbed by the news. "For a new law school to start infringing on academic freedom even before it opens its door does not bode well for this institution," Levenson said in an interview. "I have talked to Erwin quite a bit about his plans for the new law school. He did not have a political agenda. He had an excellence agenda."
"If there's room for Ken Starr and John Eastman to be the dean of a law school, there's room for Erwin Chemerinsky," Levenson said, referring to the conservative constitutional scholars who are the deans at the Pepperdine and Chapman law schools, respectively.
Thats just how I live.
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