Erwin Chemerinsky Fighting Desperately to Keep Institutional Autonomy

Last year, a group of Muslim activists at UC-Irvine verbally disrupted a speech by the Israeli ambassador to the United States. Eleven students were arrested, and recently news has broken that Orange County D.A. Tony Rackauckas would pursue criminal conspiracy charges charges with up to six months in jail.

One hundred faculty members at UC-Irvine have signed a petition asking the D.A. to drop the charges, including UC-Irvine Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

I'm going to reserve judgment on the merits here; I personally think criminal conspiracy charges are a bit excessive, but it's not really my place to comment on it. Instead, I'd like to point out that the administrative faculty, in their defense of these students, is only minimally motivated by the notions of justice and fairness that garner their position sympathy.

When he's not cajoling students to mortgage their future to attend a 4th-tier law school on the premise that it "should be, would be, and probably will be" a 1st-tier school in the future, Chemerinsky is a Constitutional Law scholar, meaning he has something of a conflict here.

On one hand, he has to be intellectually honest. Yesterday at a forum he hosted (see caption in the link), he reiterated that the protesters were clearly in the wrong, that there's no right to do what they did (which, I must add, is not the same as "protesting," which some UC-Irvine students (see picture) can't grasp), and that so-called "heckler's vetos" are an "affront" to free speech.

At the same time, the last thing Dean Chemerinsky wants is the police and the justice department sniffing around his gilded magnolias and mouldering books. This, for example, is from the faculty letter linked above:

As faculty of the University of California, Irvine we are deeply distressed by the decision of the Orange County District Attorney to file criminal charges against the students who disrupted Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech on campus. The students were wrong to prevent a speaker invited to the campus from speaking and being heard. And the Muslim Student Union acted inappropriately in coordinating this and in misrepresenting its involvement to University officials. But the individual students and the Muslim Student Union were disciplined for this conduct by the University, including the MSU being suspended from being a student organization for a quarter. This is sufficient punishment. There is no need for criminal prosecution and criminal sanctions. The use of the criminal justice system will be detrimental to our campus as it inherently will be divisive and risk undoing the healing process which has occurred over the last year.

Read between the lines and you'll see what the real issue is: control. Does anyone seriously believe that a D.A. will be convinced that suspending an organization for a quarter is adequate punishment? Does anyone really buy this garbage about "undoing the healing process," as if UC-Irvine was on the verge of solving Muslim-Jewish differences? While some of the signatories may be interested in "justice," the real issue is the university system maintaining control of defining what "sufficient punishment" is. A threat against the academy's autonomy is a threat against its profits.

And Dean Chemerinsky makes this abundantly clear in his own lengthy editorial to the Orange County Register:

The students' behavior was wrong and deserves punishment...
UCI officials brought disciplinary charges against these students and they have been punished. The university cannot reveal the specific sanctions imposed because of laws concerning privacy of educational records. But all involved acknowledge that punishments were imposed on these students. Also, the Muslim Student Union was punished, including by being suspended from operating on campus for a quarter, for its role in coordinating the disruption and for misrepresenting its involvement to university officials.
...
A criminal record can do serious harm for these students, hindering their ability to get into graduate or professional schools or to gain employment. (emphasis mine)

And there's the rub.

If the university system had its way, there would be no teeth in the criminal justice system regarding 16-23 year olds, precisely because stern criminal justice keeps people out of many professions requiring licensing, like law and medicine.

The university wants to be on its own island while reaping benefits from the public without being subject to the D.A.'s crime-fighting efforts. The costs to society outside their little bubble are to be damned.

Here is a rather cogent response from a local resident who believes the charges should not be dropped:

The Dean contends that the punishment meted out by the university should be sufficient and no criminal charges should have been filed. Since student records in these matters are confidential, we can only speculate on the punishment. I’m certain I am not alone in my assumption that the punishment was less than a slap on the wrist with a stern reprimand. I base this assumption on the fact that the universities, in general, are a safe environment for this type of behavior under the guise of free communication of ideas and philosophies. Blah…blah….blah....
....
As a scholar in constitutional law and free speech, Dean Chemerinsky should be an advocate for a strong but fair punishment of these students and not lobbying for anything less.

Ah, but you see Joseph Hughes of Tustin, strong but fair punishment involves the state. And every time the state shows up on campus, the money tree starts the shrink bit by bit as the veil is lifted, and the good Dean just can't let that happen. If people realize that universities should be treated like other businesses and resource-hogging non-profit organizations, they might start questioning the value of them, of sending our strongest and brightest people to do busy-work for four years and paying the system for a product with limited value.