LA Times: "Chemerinsky says UC Irvine rescinds offer to become law school dean"
Constitutional scholar and professor of law Erwin Chemerinsky had an offer to be the first dean of U.C. Irvine's law school withdrawn because he was "too politically controversial," reported the Los Angeles Times.
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. . . . .
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. . . ."
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.