Zionist Conspiracy: The Chemerinsky Affair and the Zionist Bogeyman

Thursday, September 20, 2007

The Chemerinsky Affair and the Zionist Bogeyman

1. For all Plaut Listers, with Yom Kippue coming, if I have hurt or
offended you in any way, I apologize. Unless you are a leftist
anti-Zionist, in which case I meant every word.

2. Debunking the Israel Lobby anti-Jewish Lobby:

http://www.jewishpress.com/displaycontent_new.cfm?contentid=25099&mode=a&sectionid=14&contentname=My_Encounter_With_Walt%2FMearsheimer&recnum=1

3. The Moonbatocracy is pulling its remaining hairs out each time a campus
refuses to host an anti-Jewish terrorist, a Holocaust Denier, or a ranting
lying pseudo-scholar. Interestingly, none of them had any words or ire
when the Davis campus of the University of California dis-invited
ex-President of Harvard Larry Summers (see

http://www.davisenterprise.com/articles/2007/09/14/news/114new1.tx ).
Summers may be best known in recent months for denouncing the spread of
anti-Semitism on campus.

4. Seems like no one can get fired these days in academia without it all
somehow being the fault of the Zionist bogeyman.

Case in point. The University of California at Irvine (where I once
taught) is opening a law school. The candidate for the First Dean at the
School is one Erwin Chemerinsky, a left-leaning law professor fairly well
known in academic law circles, especially for his politically correct
activism. He is politically active in things like battling capital
punishment and preventing action against illegal aliens. He is also
mildly anti-Israel, although all but unknown as an Israel-basher when
comparing him to his fame as a politically correct liberal activist. He
represented the nutty Corrie family when they sued Caterpillar for their
idiotic daughter.s suicide on behalf of terrorism, and he is a member in
an anti-Zionist Jewish leftist organization (Jewish Progressive Alliance).
But all that is pretty tame by today.s campus standards.

And especially by UCI standards. UCI has been the center for a growing
plague militant Islamofascist student organizations who make no secret of
what they think should be done with the Jews. UCI also hosts the
full-time anti-Israel propagandist, Tikkun member and Finkelstein clone,
Mark Levine, who spells his name LeVine to give himself fake Norman airs,
and whom I call Mark La La Vine. See him here:

http://www.hnet.uci.edu/history/faculty/levine/
Levine is best known for organizing balanced middle east panel discussions
for UCI students in which the Israeli point of view is represented by Ilan
Pappe and Oren Yiftachel.

Now, the UCI campus notwithstanding, Orange County, in which the campus
sits, is a rightwing Republican place and not particularly Jewish and
contains its share of conservative anti-Semites, some quite vocal. The
local donors to UCI were not happy with the choice of Chemerinsky, not
because of his pathetic campaign on behalf of the Corries but because they
do not like his leftist political activism.

UCI.s Chancellor then un-appointed Chemerinsky as Dean, but a few days
later appointed him again. The Chancellor at UCI has never been very
upset by the Bash-the-Jews activities on campus of the Islamofascists and
jihadniks, refused to denounce anti-Semitic bigotry in a manner like Larry
Summers, but was nervous about losing donations from conservative gentiles
(see http://defconblog.org/2005/09/time-to-fight-the-religious-right/ ).

Meanwhile the Moonbatocracy is screaming that Chemerinsky is being
targeted by the nefarious "Israel Lobby." I never know just what these
critters mean when they scream about an "Israel Lobby" and I always
suspect that they just mean moi. Be that as it may, everyone from the
Finkelsteinians to the pro-terror Muzzlewatch.com kapos
(http://www.muzzlewatch.com/?p=243 ) to Huffington
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marjorie-cohn/erwin-chemerinsky-and-the_b_64568.html

) to the Counterpunch pogromchiks
(http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn09172007.html ), is blaming the .Israel
Lobby. for the controversy over Chemerinsky.

Meanwhile, the best article on the affair and on UCI so far is by Susan
Estrich, a law professor at
http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20070914/cm_uc_crsesx/op_393831
I reprint it here in full:
The Most Corrupt Man In California
Susan Estrich
How do you get hired and fired from a prestigious position in the same
week?
That is what happened to my friend Erwin Chemerinsky. He signed a contract
to become the first dean of the new law school at the University of
California, Irvine (UCI) last week. Then, days later, he was fired because
the UCI chancellor decided his liberal opinions made Erwin, one of the
most respected, quoted, cited and beloved constitutional law scholars in
the country, "too politically controversial" for the job.
Hogwash.
This column isn't about Erwin. In the world of law professors, everyone
who knows Erwin . liberal and conservative . respects him. The outpouring
of support for him and the disgust at what was done to him have been
overwhelming. It's about the cowardly fool who is leading his university
down the tubes, the one who should be fired by the Board of Regents when
it meets next week.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men
are almost always bad men."
So wrote Professor Lord Acton, who was the Regius Professor of Modern
History at Cambridge University, even though he had not been allowed to
attend Cambridge as a student because he was Roman Catholic. In the same
year, 1877, in a famous lecture on "The History of Freedom in Antiquity,"
Acton defined liberty as "the assurance that every man shall be protected
in doing what he believes his duty, against the influence of authority and
majorities, custom and opinion."
By Lord Acton's standard, Dr. Michael Drake, Chancellor of the University
of California at Irvine, is the most corrupt man in California. His job
is, or should be, to protect the "liberty" of both students and faculty,
the academic freedom that is the cornerstone of great universities.
But Dr. Drake has a twisted view of academic freedom, one that allows
Muslim students to engage in open anti-Semitism, to hold rallies on campus
attacking Zionist control of the media, equating Jewish support for Israel
with Hitler's Nazis, even (according to campus Republicans) displacing
previously scheduled Young Republicans meetings with rallies denouncing
Israel's right to exist. But there's no room for a liberal, Jewish law
professor who is routinely the object of bidding wars between top-rated
law schools vying for his services.
Last February, Hillel of Orange County formed a task force to investigate
what it viewed as a troubling number of anti-Semitic speeches and
incidents on the UCI campus, including complaints by Jewish students that
they were being followed and harassed by their Muslim classmates. That was
before UCI's Intifada week this past spring, which included speakers
supporting the terrorist group Hamas and a speech entitled "Zio-Nazis."
That was before the infamous Ward Churchill, defender of the 9/11 attacks,
was invited to speak on campus.
This past June, at a meeting attended by hundreds of concerned members of
the Jewish community in Irvine, Dr. Drake told one parent, whose children
don't want to attend UC Irvine because of the virulent expressions of
hatred, not to worry because these incidents "are not every other day.
It's a couple times a year." Asked why he didn't exercise his own right to
free speech to "speak directly to statements made on campus" (as former
Harvard President Lawrence Summers did when he opposed calls for
divestment from Israel by terming such actions "anti-Semitic in their
effect, if not their intent"), Dr. Drake ducked. "We have 1,000 guest
speakers on campus every year. Could I evaluate them and say this one is
anti-Semitic? I could not. What I could say is that as a person and a
campus, we abhor hate speech, period."
On the other hand, we have no room for a liberal law professor . whose
views were well known before he was hired, who is squarely in the
mainstream of modern constitutional thought . because we're afraid to take
the heat that may be coming from some of Drake's biggest donors. While
Drake told Erwin it was the Regents he was worried about, that was an
out-and-out lie. He later admitted he didn't consult a one of them, and
instead pointed to an op-ed Erwin wrote back in mid-August about death
penalty procedure . even though he signed a contract with Chemerinsky
three weeks after the op-ed was published.
No, this was Drake's call, and it will doom his law school, if it doesn't
doom him first.
To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at

Zionist Conspiracy

Thursday, September 20, 2007

The Chemerinsky Affair and the Zionist Bogeyman

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