Law deans differ on ethics of advocacy
When Christopher Edley Jr. became dean of the Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley three years ago, he regretfully gave up his presidential appointment to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
He had been an outspoken civil rights activist as a Harvard law professor, but he believed that as a law school dean he could no longer engage in the same kind of high-profile advocacy.
"The freedom we cherish and defend for the faculty and students is simply not available to a dean or other leader in the same measure," he wrote in an e-mail last week, "because accepting such a position means accepting, for a time, that the needs of the community one serves must be paramount."
The view that a law school dean has to tone down personal opinions was highlighted last week by UC Irvine's controversial decision to rescind the hiring of outspoken Duke University law professor Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of its new law school.
Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake said that after hiring Chemerinsky, he changed his mind because he feared the liberal constitutional scholar would be too politically controversial and polarizing to make the transition from teacher to administrator.
Some UC Irvine officials are considering a deal to reverse Drake's decision yet again and rehire Chemerinsky. But attorney Tom Malcolm, a prominent Orange County Republican involved in the discussions, said that would require the professor to "successfully transition from being a very outspoken advocate on many causes to being a dean of the stature that we expect in a start-up law school."
But does being a law school dean automatically mean giving up the academic freedom enjoyed by professors?
Chemerinsky says no.
"The whole point of academic freedom is that professors -- and, yes, even deans -- should be able to speak out on important issues," Chemerinsky wrote in an opinion piece Friday in The Times.
Edley, who backs Drake's decision not to hire Chemerinsky, argues that a deanship requires a moderate public profile, especially for a dean of a publicly funded law school.
"In taking on these responsibilities, one must subordinate a significant measure of autonomy in favor of the interests of the institution," Edley said. "In some respects, this is the antithesis of scholarly freedom and autonomy, and hence these jobs are not for everyone."
