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What is going on with the UC Regents?!!!!
First this:
In a showdown over academic freedom, a prominent legal scholar said Wednesday that the University of California, Irvine's chancellor had succumbed to conservative political pressure in rescinding his contract to head the university's new law school, a charge the chancellor vehemently denied.
Erwin Chemerinsky, a well-known liberal expert on constitutional law, said he had signed a contract Sept. 4, only to be told Tuesday by Chancellor Michael V. Drake that he was voiding their deal because Chemerinsky was too liberal and the university had underestimated "conservatives out to get me."
Now this:
After a group of UC Davis women faculty began circulating a petition, UC regents rescinded an invitation to Larry Summers, the controversial former president of Harvard University, to speak at a board dinner Wednesday night in Sacramento.
Both of these decisions are shameful.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on September 16, 2007 at 07:12 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
Both decisions are shameful. Summers has been misunderstood and misinterpreted by too many narrow minded academics trying to be politically correct instead of searching for the truth. The pettiness of the academic world is truly disheartening.
Posted by: Robbins at Sep 16, 2007 7:51:54 AM
Shameful, but telling. However, on second glance, the two cases are not at all alike. In the first, UCI decided it didn't want Chemerinsky to lead the law school. In the second, UCD decided that it wouldn't even let Larry Summers speak there. Big difference. It's like the difference between a date and a marriage.
Posted by: Dennis Mangan at Sep 16, 2007 9:35:25 AM
Certainly, it's pretty bad to rescind a job offer to a good scholar because you're afraid of upsetting some major donors. That diminishes your academic brand out of the gate.
And it's really awful to rescind the speaking invitation. University leftists are now going after the best and brightest liberals.
One of the biggest political problems that Democrats have is a gap among the college educated. There are many reasons for this (some related to socio-economic issues). But one major reason for this undergraduate gap is that undergraduates mainly get their exposure to non-Republican ideas through the most annoying, grating, and moronic campus leftists. Conceptually speaking, if your choice is between Noam Chomsky and George Bush, George Bush starts to look pretty good.
It really does fall to a small handful of intelligent liberals to show college students that you can be a Democrat with thoughts that consist of something more than mindless platitudes. And these liberals are increasingly shunned and shouted down by the lesser lefty academic lights.
Posted by: Keith at Sep 16, 2007 12:56:21 PM
Dennis Mangan writes "wouldn't even let Larry Summers speak there" as though the Summers thing was clearly more extreme than the Chemerinsky thing. I think they're both pretty dramatic instances of politics openly trumping supposed academic and public-institutional norms, and one could argue either way for which is more extreme.
For example, in mainstream political thought, and AFAIK in California law, a fair amount of freedom of association and contract remains in inviting speakers. Hiring and firing long-term employees is pretty far from free: there are lots of requirements and legal liabilities. Many of the parties involved in this controversy generally support such strong limitations on freedom of hiring and firing in principle, to protect the basic positive economic rights of the individual against bigger corporate entities and so forth. And the limitations have made it into law in various relevant ways: see http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_09_09-2007_09_15.shtml#1189794796 for some details of how the Chemerinsky thing might be legally actionable. As far as I know, the Summers thing is not actionable: UCD "merely" exercised their freedom to choose a speaker, unlike UCI wickedly depriving someone of his entitled status as an employee for impermissible reasons.:-|
Posted by: William Newman at Sep 16, 2007 12:57:05 PM
I wrote an email of complaint to
mlstanton@ucdavis.edu
It is the adress of Maureen Stanton, a Professor for Evolution and Ecology who is among the woman faculty that circulated the petition to stop Summers from speaking.
Here is my mail:
I just wanted to leave you a note telling you that I think you are hurting science, by restraining people as Larry Summers to speak. Letting political sensibilities trump over scientific debate is an unenlightened practice and hinders the progressiveness, on which behalf you probably assume to be acting. No matter how unpleasant some of the hypothesis Summers has stated (he has always made it very clear that he himself sees them only as hypothesis) might seem to you, it is through critical debate not through silencing your opponent that you should encounter such claims, when they come from a scientist as reasonable as Summers. For me your action is further testimony to how political sensibilities hinder civil liberties in the current polarized enviroment in the United States, please be smarter than that and admit that you made a mistake (the most honourable thing a good scientist adhering to Popper's principle of falsification can do anyways).
Posted by: Sander Wagner at Sep 16, 2007 1:24:16 PM
I wrote an email of complaint to
mlstanton@ucdavis.edu
It is the adress of Maureen Stanton, a Professor for Evolution and Ecology who is among the woman faculty that circulated the petition to stop Summers from speaking.
Here is my mail:
I just wanted to leave you a note telling you that I think you are hurting science, by restraining people as Larry Summers to speak. Letting political sensibilities trump over scientific debate is an unenlightened practice and hinders the progressiveness, on which behalf you probably assume to be acting. No matter how unpleasant some of the hypothesis Summers has stated (he has always made it very clear that he himself sees them only as hypothesis) might seem to you, it is through critical debate not through silencing your opponent that you should encounter such claims, when they come from a scientist as reasonable as Summers. For me your action is further testimony to how political sensibilities hinder civil liberties in the current polarized enviroment in the United States, please be smarter than that and admit that you made a mistake (the most honourable thing a good scientist adhering to Popper's principle of falsification can do anyways).
Posted by: Sander Wagner at Sep 16, 2007 1:26:40 PM
Alex-
I covered both in my blog at http:drtaxsacto.blogspot.com. There is some talk that Drake and Chemerinsky may yet come back together.
Posted by: drtaxsacto at Sep 16, 2007 1:50:29 PM
My letter to Prof. Stanton and ccd to Provost Vanderhoef
Dear Prof. Stanton,
I am a Ph.D student in the social sciences and was very much struck by the reaction of yourself and those 150 women faculty members to Summers scheduled talk. One can't help but feeling more anxious about offending women in seminars and discussions. Would I be alone in feeling this? Will this not affect our ability to inquire freely?
This suggests that there is a tension between the function of the university as a place of "free" inquiry, where controversy is courted, and the other social functions which a university now performs: job training, self esteem building, a showcase of laudable social attitudes and other forms of social activism… See this article for more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/books/review/Donadio-t.html
We can easily release this tension by segregating its functions. Those faculty, grad students and students who want free inquiry should in their classes, seminars and other activities be asked to sign a waver releasing the university of any liability for hurt feelings, damaged self image... These same people must also promise to restrict their reactions to ideas presented to general standards of civil discourse: presenting counter arguments and refrain from personal attacks...in particular, law suits and demands for resignations for opinions expressed. Faculty should also promise to hire junior faculty based only upon the accepted forms of academic merit, e.g., good arguments that are well defended, and not upon preferences for the content of the argument, in particular, political content. The other functions of the university can go on as before, but now without the interference from the demands of free inquiry. Admissions of students, hiring of faculty, speaker invitations should be based on diversity, equity, social justice. Now, they can have equal representation of all races, sexes, sexual orientation…anything whatever without impedance from extraneous considerations of scholastic aptitude, publication record… They may pay women more than men, blacks more than whites…As long as taxpayers think it's a valuable social function, why not? By separating these functions also, students can better choose their courses. Whereas now, some students think they are taking a course in literature, but may actually be getting a course in a special brand of politics. Firms can better hire. Now, they may hire graduates because they think these students can write and do math and think analytically, but in fact, can only take "critical" stances against perceived inequality and social injustice. Similarly, parents make the mistake in believing that their kids being trained for some profession whereas they are actually be provoked into anger at THE system. Along with this partition of the university, we should also consider changing the name, because "university" itself confounds its two functions. If we deconstruct the word, we would see that within it are most of the letters for "diversity", with the remainder being "un"--the residual reflecting the singularity of truth--which is "un-diverse"? From now on, the business of free inquiry could be done under the aegis of "un" and the business of social activism could be done under the aegis of "diversity". So, in the future, students can claim unambiguously, that they got a "diversity" degree, and everyone will know what they mean. Whereas now, they get a diversity degree and people might think they got it from a "un", ie, they actually know the un-diverse truth about something.
I am sure you would understand, if I don't sign my name, given the risk of offending some woman faculty in my Department and the possibility of stronger reprisals than a withdrawl of a speaking invitation.
--
Best,
Anon
Posted by: David at Sep 16, 2007 3:36:53 PM
Something even odder about the Summers business is that I am sure he was not invited to, or scheduled to,
or planning to, speak about this particular matter, which, if I remember correctly, he had actually apologized
for saying back while he was still Harvard prez, much to the annoyance of some people at the time. He almost
certainly was to have spoken on more strictly economics matters. So, the whole thing is really ludicrous,
banning somebody for something that they once said, for which they apologized, and which they were not scheduled
to speak on anyway. I am not for such censorship in general, but this case is even stupider than the usual.
The UCI administration seems to be seriously incompetent, especially its current Chancellor.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Sep 16, 2007 3:47:45 PM
At law school it's very important to have professors who reflect the political and legal beliefs of most actual judges. Law students are there to learn what the law is, and how judges will mostly likely decide actual disputes, not to obsess over what the law "should be" in the eyes of professors who can't stand the real law and the starry-eyed students who follow them. Unless the law student is careful discover the handful of professors who actually teach real law, most law schools these days are a waste of money because through a creative selection of seldom-followed cases, they teach a twisted utopia that has little relation to how most judges will actually decide cases.
Hint: note how when professors like Lessig, Barnett, etc. (and here I'm picking on two whose ideas I like) who have a great-sounding spiel and throngs of student admirers end up in front of the Supreme Court, they lose quite badly, and damage the political cause of their followers in their process. Quite the opposite of what a good lawyer does!
Posted by: nick at Sep 16, 2007 6:25:47 PM
Hear, hear, anon!
Posted by: Steve at Sep 16, 2007 9:41:24 PM
The Irvine Ranch/The Irvine Company owned and developed virtually all of the City of Irvine. I would believe that they are powerful enough to singlehandedly decide that UC Irvine didn't need an uppity law school dean. I have no evidence it was them, but I also believe that nothing happens in Irvine without their permission.
Posted by: anon at Sep 16, 2007 11:21:27 PM
Summers' second most prominent critic, UC Santa Cruz President Deneen Denton jumped off the roof of her lover's high-rise apartment building last year in the wake of a series of financial scandals involving lesbian UC administrators. For the quite lurid details, see:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/061001_diversity.htm
The jihad against Summers isn't intellectual. It's all about money and power.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 16, 2007 11:26:23 PM
Summers' second most prominent critic, UC Santa Cruz President Deneen Denton jumped off the roof of her lover's high-rise apartment building last year in the wake of a series of financial scandals involving lesbian UC administrators. For the quite lurid details, see:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/061001_diversity.htm
The jihad against Summers isn't intellectual. It's all about money and power.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 16, 2007 11:28:41 PM
"Frankly, we'd like to see the story just die at this point," says Stanton
After she's ambushed and killed. Silly woman.
Posted by: David Zetland at Sep 17, 2007 1:17:59 AM
Keith, why do you call feminists "leftists"? They're more like conservatives these days. "Change anything?? We'd die first!"
Posted by: Russell Nelson at Sep 17, 2007 2:08:44 AM
Now let me get this right...a university that discriminates against liberals??? Up next, the tooth fairy...
Posted by: FWB at Sep 17, 2007 2:32:34 AM
Yeah, but one of those issues was about a person who was going to actually lead the school, the other was about simply talking. Both are bad, but one is more intolerant than the other.
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