IRVINE Calif.
A conservative Los Angeles County politician asked about two dozen people in an e-mail last month how to prevent the University of California, Irvine from hiring renowned liberal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as its founding law school dean, a spokesman for the politician said Friday.
Making Chemerinsky the head of the law school “would be like appointing al-Qaida in charge of homeland security,” Michael Antonovich, a longtime Republican member of the county Board of Supervisors, said in a voicemail left with The Associated Press.
He was not available for further comment on why he was getting involved in the situation at a campus located outside his jurisdiction in Orange County.
Chemerinsky is an internationally respected scholar and commentator on constitutional law who’s now at Duke University in Durham, N.C.
Antonovich’s e-mail “expressed his dismay with the choice for the dean of the law school and suggested that this was the wrong decision and it should be changed,” said Tony Bell, a spokesman for the supervisor.
Antonovich, a local GOP stalwart, was first elected in 1980. He is a staunch conservative who has supported crackdowns on illegal immigrants, and voted against tax increases and HIV-prevention programs that distribute free syringes.
