Chemerinsky re-hired

He's back, baby!

UC Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake and Erwin Chemerinsky have reached an agreement that will return the liberal legal scholar to the dean's post at the university's new law school, the university announced this morning.

With the deal, they hope to end the controversy that erupted when Chemerinsky was dropped as the first dean of the Donald Bren School of Law.

Drake traveled over the weekend to Durham, N.C., where Chemerinsky is a professor at Duke University, and the two reached an agreement about midnight Sunday, sources told The Times.

In a statement, Drake and Chemerinsky said: "Many issues were addressed in depth, including several areas of miscommunication and misunderstanding. All issues were resolved to our mutual satisfaction."

Drake's decision to dump Chemerinsky last week set off a national debate about academic freedom and sparked a revolt by faculty at UCI against Drake.

Cool.  Now Chemerinsky needs to do something really outrageous, so he can get himself re-fired. C'mon Erwin, you know you want to be the Billy Martin of academia!

Anyway, about that whole "end the controversy" thing... well, as Lee Corso would say, "Not so fast, my friend!" (Suddenly I have this mental picture of Corso, sitting on the GameDay set with a crowd of cheering UC Irvine students behind him, putting on a larger-than-life replica of Chemerinsky's head after "picking" him to win the showdown with Drake... heh. Someone needs to Photoshop this!) An anonymous tipster sends along this e-mail from the chair of the UC Irvine Academic Senate, sent out at 10:59 AM PDT today:

Dear colleagues,

Recent events related to the appointment of the Dean of the Law School have raised concerns about academic freedom and the Chancellor's leadership of the campus. We are encouraged by the joint announcement of Chancellor Drake and Professor Erwin Chemerinsky that Professor Chemerinsky has been offered and has accepted the position of Dean of the UCI School of Law. However, it is important that the UCI faculty discuss the issues and concerns raised by recent events.

The Senate Cabinet has called an emergency meeting of the Divisional Senate Assembly for Thursday, September 20, 2007, 2:00-5:00 p.m. in 1100 Bren Hall (Bldg 314 on the UCI map). All faculty are invited to attend this meeting.

The agenda for the meeting is the Chancellor's leadership of the campus and our commitment to academic freedom.

Tim Bradley, Chair, UCI Academic Senate

This could be ugly, folks. You know what they say about academic feuds.

More here. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

Comments

[Jim]

The Academic Senate is meeting in Bren Hall to discuss the hiring of Erwin to be dean of the Bren School of Law, which will hold its first commencement in the Bren Center. Let's just go ahead and rename the place UC Bren.

[Joe Loy]

"Now Chemerinsky needs to do something really outrageous, so he can get himself re-fired."

Not so Really outrageous, really :). All he need do is to demand an immediate leave of absence for the purpose of signing on as OJ's new defense counsel, and successfully moving for Dismissal of the Case on the high Constitutional ground of Double Jeopardy: defendant being tried a Second time for crimes of which he was previously Acquitted.

Which, as I say, is not so Really outrageous because, in the Big Picture as it is gleefully Perceived by the entire nationwide Jury Pool, that is Exactly what's happening. :> Therefore, Per-fesser, get (as any Randomly-recorded TMZ.com audiotape might put it :) your f*****g a** the f*** up to Vegas and just Bag that m****rf*****g sh**. Are we cool?

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