Newly hired dean of UC Irvine Law School fired for liberal political views

This just in: According to Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports, a blog on comings-and-goings in legal academia, UC Irvine, which recently got approval to start a law school, last week hired Duke’s Erwin Chemerinsky (pictured), a prominent constitutional law scholar, to be its inaugural dean — and then fired him yesterday because of his political views. (For background, here’s a recent Los Angeles Times story on Chemerinsky when he was a leading candidate for the job.)

According to Leiter’s report, about a week ago Chemerinsky signed a contract to be the dean of Irvine’s Donald Bren School of Law. But Yesterday, Irvine’s chancellor, Michael V. Drake, flew to Duke and fired Chemerinsky, “saying that he had not been aware of how Chemerinsky’s political views would make him a target for criticism from conservatives,” according to the report.

The new public law school is expected to begin classes in 2009. (For more on the school’s namesake Donald Bren, a billionaire real estate developer and big Republican donor, click here.)

UPDATE: We’ve spoken to Chemerinsky, who confirmed the account, though he said the chancellor was already in D.C. before he flew to Durham on Tuesday. (The Law Blog has a call in to Chancellor Drake.)

UPDATE: Some colleagues speculate that Irvine hoped to get more donations from Donald Bren, the real estate developer who endowed the Law School and who is also a major donor to the Republican Party . Whether Mr. Bren played any role in this is something that perhaps the newspapers which investigate this story may unearth. Even if financial gain was the motive, the University, I suspect, has miscalculated the costs and benefits of its misconduct, since the reputational damage the school will now incur is likely to be quite substantial.