Erwin and Larry

Now listen here, lads and lassies, for this be a good article:

The saga of controversial liberal law professor Erwin Chemerinsky's on-again, off-again deanship at the new UC Irvine law school was highly unusual in two ways. First, the pressure to enforce political orthodoxy at Chemerinsky's expense came from the right, not the left, and second, academic freedom and 1st Amendment values won a resounding victory when Chemerinsky was ultimately rehired. ...

The Chemerinsky episode, disturbing though it was, should not distract us from the primary challenge facing academic freedom in American universities: the rise of an academic far-left establishment that seeks to use universities as a base for political activism, and is perfectly willing to violate accepted standards of academic freedom to achieve that goal. Anyone concerned with the future of American higher education has the duty to defend the values of scholarship and open debate against authoritarian political correctness.

Read the whole thing, me hearties. (Tip o' the hat: InstaPundit.)

Comments

[gahrie]

Were you intentionally punning off the sit and sleep ads? because that's the first thing I thought of when I read the headline.

[Andrew]

Holy crap, gahrie, they have Sit n Sleeps where you live?

"...or your mattress is freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!"

[JT]

5 points off for making NAZI analogy.

[gahrie]

I live in So Cal....I hear them all the time..."You're killing me Larry....."

What intrigues me most about the hire, fire, and rehire of Chemerinsky is that it happened to a noted liberal, whereas the prevailing thought is that, in hiring decisions, it's the conservatives who are blacklisted from vacant faculty positions. I recently read a story about a candidate for a tenure-track position in Stanford's Political Science Department who allegedly shot his chances at landing the position after espousing support for private school vouchers at a post-interview luncheon with the department heads. Otherwise liberal, and a minority no less, the interviewee noted the shift in tone after his statement and the apparent disgust on the faces of those within the department who heard the comment. While anecdotal, there are countless stories like this for individuals who, in some capacity, demonstrate political conservatism.

I'm bothered by the implications of this story, and in truth, I should be equally bothered by the implications of the Chemerinsky debacle. Stimulating the minds of college and university students, in my opinion, requires at least some diversity of political and philosophical persuasion. Accordingly, I don't think any individual should be automatically nixed simply for holding a particular point of view. I realize that some of my conservative friends will castigate me for holding this opinion, but I nevertheless hold it. I simply have no problem, for example, with the existence of a token atheist (or two) in the philosophy department at Notre Dame, so long as students are given adequate information, in advance, about the nature of the courses taught by the professor and the perspective from which he or she will teach them.

Now, what strikes me as inconsistent, is the total lack of outcry over the blacklisting of conservatives throughout the country when compared to the scandal surrounding the hiring, firing and re-hiring of Chemerinsky after what amounts to the same, albeit reverse, treatment by the hiring board at Irvine. If academic freedom applies to Chemerinsky's points of view, it should also apply to the points of view of Conservatives. To those championing the academic freedom of the now former Duke professor, this does not appear to hold. Hypocrisy, I say.