UCI screws up again

[thedarkages]

A year or so ago, I had a conversation with the person to whom I report for Yale admissions, a prominent Orange County lawyer. He said, "If UCI can't take care of its own messes, it doesn't deserve a law school." He was referring to the persistent series of UCI scandals, which the current Chancellor, Michael Drake, had swept under the rug dealt with in his tenure. Drake couldn't really handle the scandals, and he's created a new one. Days after offering the decanate of the long-awaited law school to Erwin Chemerinsky, Drake has rescinded the appointment, stating that Chemerinsky was "too liberal." Apparently, Drake has been living in fear of the UC Regents making life difficult for him -- a position he would not be in if his credibility were not weakened by the scandals. Rather than shepherding Chemerinsky through the confirmation process, Drake has dropped him -- an admission of Drake's inability to get the job done.

If you have a potentially controversial candidate -- and Chemerinsky is not controversial -- you float a trial balloon, and gauge the strength of the opposition before deciding to proceed. You do not have a man sign a contract for employment and then "rescind" the contract. That's the sign of a spineless schmuck.

I wish to God I were a major donor to UCI, because then I would have the pleasure of cutting the university off at the knees. UCI, truly, does not deserve a law school.

Comments

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

Unrelatedly, l'shana tova!

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

Did you hear that UC Davis just rescinded a speaking invitation to Larry Summers due to student pressure?

This whole business of requiring academics and administrators to pass political litmus tests to please either big contributors or student political groups has gotten way out of hand. Rather than being a place where young people are exposed to a variety of viewpoints, universities are have become depressingly homogeneous bastions of enforced groupthink.

[thedarkages]

I agree that banning Summers was odious. However, take the idea of "variety" too far and you run into David Horowitz mining the idea of "diversity" to slip more conservatives into the university for no reason other than ideology. Let the grad students come out how they may, I say.

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

Are you suggesting that Horowitz's counterparts on the Left *haven't* mined the idea of diversity to slip more liberals into the university for no reason other than ideology, or is that okay because you happen to subscribe to that ideology?

[thedarkages]

Considering that the beneficiaries of diversity programs include figures such as John Yoo and Clarence Thomas, I would consider it more credible that these programs were doing what they were set up to do -- encourage diversity.

Right-wing foundations such as the Olin Foundation have been trying to capture the hearts and minds of graduate students for years -- even I got a very attractive offer from them in my senior year of college. The numbers quoted by Horowitz show that those efforts aren't getting very far. Whether this is due to "groupthink" or simply due to something like the idea that graduate school does not lead to the remunerative lifestyle conservative students favor, draining them off towards programs in law and business, is a matter for further study.