Shedding Light on L'Affaire Chemerinsky?

In today's Inside Higher Education, Jon Wiener, a professor of history at the University of California at Irvine , discusses the recent controversy over the hiring, firing, and rehiring of Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, who will become the founding dean of Irvine's new law school. Professor Wiener discusses a number of different theories that might account for Chancellor Michael Drake's decision to rescind the offer to Professor Chemerinsky. None of these theories aaddresses what is, to me, the biggest mystery of all--why would a scholar of Professor Chemerinsky's stature agree to head up a start-up law school at a university whose chancellor would cave in to pressure, regardless of the source of the pressure?