Erwinning is Losing
I'm sure people have already read about the fiasco at UCI Law School. Stuart Benjamin speculates what may have happened here. Considering that the dean's job is to raise money and recruit faculty, the school is tanked all because the named donor (their equivalent of Boalt) balked.
On the flip side, there are apparently some Boalt alumni who are reluctant to donate to Boalt and Edley because they feel his vision is too liberal. In a weird way, the whole legal education and profession are a bit of a wag the dog dilemma. I seem to remember Wings and Vodka posting about how UT is using every square inch for corporate donor sponsorships, but I just can't find it. (My personal favorite from W&V: Outlines). The only other substantive thing I could add is that Chemerinsky has done a great deal for the Los Angeles community (LA Charter Commission, LAPD Commission, commentator during the OJ Trial, etc.) and I was terribly sad to see him leave U$C for Duke. Now I'm even sadder to see UCI act like a bunch of grade A morons.
On the flip side, there are apparently some Boalt alumni who are reluctant to donate to Boalt and Edley because they feel his vision is too liberal. In a weird way, the whole legal education and profession are a bit of a wag the dog dilemma. I seem to remember Wings and Vodka posting about how UT is using every square inch for corporate donor sponsorships, but I just can't find it. (My personal favorite from W&V: Outlines). The only other substantive thing I could add is that Chemerinsky has done a great deal for the Los Angeles community (LA Charter Commission, LAPD Commission, commentator during the OJ Trial, etc.) and I was terribly sad to see him leave U$C for Duke. Now I'm even sadder to see UCI act like a bunch of grade A morons.
Labels: Rabid Conservatives, Rankings And Associated Bullshit
posted by Armen Adzhemyan at 9:05 PM
15 Comments:
As a UCI alum at Boalt, I'm pissed. It's obvious Drake has no idea how anything in the legal community works and did not consult anyone with such knowledge before deciding to do this. I hope either they decide to cancel the law school or have Drake fired and attempt to rehire Chemerinsky.
The thing that infuriates me is that there are lots of reasons floating about for why the offer was recinded, but none of them make sense. If it was political issues with the regents A) why such a fight for Chemerinsky when Edley flew through? Can you really say that Chemerinsky is so much more controversial / liberal than Edley? B) why wasn't he vetted with the powers that be before extending an offer.
If it was the donor, didn't they already get the $20 million donation from Bren for the law school? Was Bren going to rescind it? Or did he promise more (seems unlikely)? Also, wtf does a real estate tycoon know about legal scholars.
If Chemerinsky was difficult to work with, why couldn't this be determined in some sort of interview process. Even that was true, it would be better to have him on one or two years and then encourage him to leave rather than do this.
Nothing adds up except A) Drake is incompetent and/or B) someone is trying to tank the law school at UCI.
I wouldn't be so quick to discount the Bren hypothesis. One thing to remember about Bren is that he seems to thrive on perpetuating his own name and legacy (e.g. The Bren Events Center and the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science - both at UCI.) I highly doubt that Bren's donation to the law school would be an anonymous gift or one with no strings attached. He has too many connections to the UCI institution in general. Not only are many sites on UCI's campus named after Bren, but keep in mind that The Irvine Company, Bren's enterprise, donated the land that UCI sits on.
Another thing to note is that Bren is not simply a real estate tycoon. He literally built Orange County from the ground up. Donald Bren is connected to everyone who is anyone in the OC. If Donald Bren's name is attached to what becomes a (perceived) liberal institution, this could have an effect on his reputation in the community. Not only that, but if UCI falls out of the good graces of Donald Bren, I am sure there will be great consequences for UCI. Most importantly, these consequences would come in the form of a lackof future donations from OC's wealthiest - donations which the school can't afford to miss out on. What does Bren know about legal scholars? Nothing. But this isn't about legal scholars. This is about politics and the University's long term planning.
On another note, I don't think the hiring of Edley for Boalt can be compared to the hiring of Chemerinsky for UCI. Orange County is a highly conservative and Republican dominated area. Therefore, placing a liberal figure in OC would meet far more opposition from the surrounding community than would placing a liberal in Berkeley. And let's face it - each UC campus needs financial support from its surrounding community in order to operate and gain necessary financial support. If you look at the situation from an economic perspective, it is easy to see why Edley would "fly through" and Chemerinsky would not.
Edley is too liberal for BOALT alums? I know he wants to give money to public interest types through increased financial aid and the LRAP (God bless him for that!). But concurrently he wants to raise tuition to private levels and make Boalt the equal of Harvard and Yale. What do non-liberals have to complain about that?
As for that UCI flak: why didn't somebody just tell DBren the truth? Sure, there may be a lot of liberal noise coming out of a law school headed by Chemerinsky. But if you give it enough money it will be ranked high enough that all its graduates are just going to work for your friends' corporate law firms anyways.
And thanks for that link about outlines. Reminds me I need to start outlining.
Picture going to a law school where the dean wants to raise your tuition to fund a loan forgiveness program for people who go work at Focus on the Family. That is why conservatives might not want to donate to Boalt in the Edley era.
When I grow up, I'm going to Bovine University.
More and more of the focus is drifting away from Bren and toward a recent op-ed piece Chemerinsky wrote about states and habeas corpus (in which he incorrectly slighted California's financial support for indigent defense). Un-named "key players" within the UC system were said to have lost confidence in Chemerinsky's ability to put the needs of the school above his personal desire to be an outspoken commentator. (I think that would have helped UCI gain publicity, but no one asked me.) It sounds as if many people within the UC system know who the key players were, but so far no names have been named.
Breaking development, it's all Edley's fault:
LA Times
Volokh
I should have known. Screw you Edley.
How long until we get the announcement that Edley's leaving for Southern California?
Au contraire, smooth move Edley just successfully killed the new competition. Good job you dastardly fiend!
I seriously doubt that Edley supported this decision before hand. Or maybe he did. The more interesting question is why, after the fact, he is putting his own reputation behind Drake who had done a terrible job with this whole situation. What's Edley owe Drake or want from him?
In response to a comment above, if you want to use LRAP to work for Focous on the Family as an attorney, I'm sure you can. relax, dude, you and the conservatives run the country, you'll be out of "crazy" berkeley shortly and you can keep all of your six figure salary all to yourself, i'm sure you'll finally be able to get a lady once you own a bmw.
Edley's quote says that he was explaining the decision, and not justifying it. Edley said, "whether that's the right or wrong decision ...." In a heated atmosphere, jumping to conclusions without proof is a bad idea.
8:51 - From LA Times:
Drake drew support from Christopher Edley, dean of the Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley, whom Drake consulted on the decision to let Chemerinsky go.
"It appeared to me that Michael was willing to go forward in the face of opposition but for the fact that he lost confidence in Erwin's willingness to subordinate his autonomy and personal profile for the good of the institution," Edley said.
Edley, who worked in the Clinton administration, said it was nothing that he had not been called to do himself.
"I was questioned explicitly by people who feared I would turn the deanship into a platform for my own ideological commitments," he said. "But it was clear to me then, and it's clear to me now, that the job requires something else."
The word "support" is the reporter's word.
The first quoted passage expressly puts the decision in Drake's hands and Edley doesn't say that it was his decision, that he agreed with it, that he disagreed with it, or anything else for that matter.
The second passage says that he himself was questioned on a similar issue and that he believes Deans have to put the needs of the institution first. For all we know, he could still believe that statement and also privately believe that Drake's decision was good, bad, or somewhere in between.
At this point, to make the argument that the public quotes "support" or "defend" Drake's decision, we'd have to argue that anyone who doesn't publicly condemn the decision is necessarily defending it. Of course, it's likely that Edley has an opinion about Drake's decision -- but we haven't heard it yet and perhaps never will.
On a totally unrelated note, why does the school make it so hard to know which buildings have asbestos in them: "For more specific
information about asbestos in your building, please contact the Physical Plant-Campus Services
(PP-CS) Asbestos Coordinator (643-2652). (http://www.ehs.berkeley.edu/healthsafety/asbestosletter.pdf) Why not just make the information available in a pdf on the web?
Probably because a lot of them do. Wonder if they are trying to hide bad facts from those litigious boalt students?
Umm asbestos is your biggest concern at Berkeley? Are you kidding me? There are buildings at the university that have their basements sealed off by concrete to protect against radiation leaks. If I'm not mistaken, whatever the current chemistry building is, has its basement sealed off this way. In the early days of nuclear research (I guess Marie Curry didn't teach us anything), they took no precautions whatsoever. Until fairly recently, they used to house the graduate students in the chemistry department there. So yeah, avoid the little triangle symbols. Asbestos pales in comparison.
U$C couldn't be any less clever. It's a great school, btw.
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