<!--StartFragment-->

A commissar’s defining attribute is his inability to attack (or even point out) the injustices of the ruling party he’s been allowed to join; this “inability” in turn commands a premium salary, as it is understood to be the sine qua non of this ruling party’s abuses of power.  And since these ruling parties have long included powerful corporations, we should also be looking for these commissars within the ranks one of California’s most powerful corporations: The Regents of the University of California.

Back in September 2007, the University of California, Irvine, hired, fired, and after a national uproar within so-called conservative and liberal circles against this firing, then rehired Erwin Chemerinsky as founding Dean of UCI’s School of Law.  The next question that should have immediately come to mind is: when a University of California administration evidently thinks it can get away with such an obscene attempt to violate the university’s own fundamental academic and ethical (and perhaps contractual) principles to weed out an individual who moves freely within the highest circles of conservative and liberal power within America, how much more abusively might the University of California’s administrations be acting when weeding out those who, as individuals, have no such power: UC students?  Indeed, following his own ordeal coming into UCI, this question should have been one of the first to enter the mind of Chemerinsky himself, deeply concerned as he proclaims himself to be with the professional integrity and academic quality of the entire University of California public education system.

So what does Chemerinsky do when he is then presented with a case claiming that a UC administration has weeded out a student by discarding crucial facts and disregarding the University’s academic and ethical principles found in the UC’s own Faculty Code of Conduct?  That is, what does he do with a case claiming that UCLA has weeded out a student in a manner at least as obscene as the one UCI tried to use to weed him out?  

When he remains silent about the case, we’re then faced with this crucial question: Is Erwin Chemerinsky also a commissar for the University of California?

Some investigative reporting to answer this question could allow the public a far deeper understanding of the primary functions and aims of the University of California, at a time when this invaluable public university system is ever more rapidly being lost to the public.

I’ve “leaked” my email correspondence from UCI’s Chemerinsky (and UC Berkeley’s Ben Bagdikian and UCLA’s Carlos P. Otero) because I believe it shows how UC faculty facilitate a UC weeding operation that disposes of facts and violates the University’s own Faculty Code of Conduct.  Therefore, it is my hope that this correspondence will instigate and aid investigative reporting into how the University of California operates on the public, in the name of the public.  This public release of private correspondence on the University of California’s central “weeding out” operation is also done in the spirit of Noam Chomsky’s statement: “The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn’t betray it I’d be ashamed of myself.”  I believe a close examination of this UC faculty correspondence will help demonstrate the accuracy of his conclusion on the intellectual tradition—and the need to betray those perpetuating this shameful (and dangerous) tradition of servility.  And come what may, I’m offering this correspondence on a student expulsion at UCLA—“the most popular campus in the nation”—in an effort to strengthen this valuable public university system, and to advance public education itself.

(This correspondence can presently be easily found with a Google search using these faculty members’ names followed by ‘email.’  Or to find the source webpage, simply Google: “The Secular Priesthood and the University of California”)