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Footage surfaced online Thursday of University of California, Berkeley dean Erwin Chemerinsky appearing to claim that he secretly discriminates in hiring faculty for the sake of diversity.
In the days following the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action in college admissions, political commentators across the United States have debated how race and diversity politics have played out in America’s institutions, especially in education.
During this debate, Critical Race Theory opponent Christopher Rufo tweeted undated footage of Chemerinsky appearing to explain to students how “unspoken affirmative action” is achieved when a “college or university doesn’t tell anyone, doesn’t make public statements” about it doing It.
“I’ll give you an example from our law school, but if I ever get impeached, I’ll deny saying this to you,” he said in the video. “When we’re hiring teachers, we’re very aware that diversity is important to us, and we say diversity is important. It’s okay to say that.”
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Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school, at his home in Oakland, California, on Tuesday, January 19, 2021. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
He went on to say that he is “very careful when we have a faculty nomination committee meeting, when someone says, ‘We really should favor this candidate or this candidate because this person would add diversity’ – don’t say that You can think it, you can vote on it, but our discussions are not privileged, so never articulate that’s what you do.”
He said, “That works easier in regards to faculty hiring,” then noted that such a tactic is more difficult for “student admissions” due to “statistical measure” before the clip ends.
Since Proposition 209 was passed in 1996, the California State Constitution has prohibited affirmative action in “public employment, public education, or public procurement.” In 2020, the University of California Council of Regency supported a ballot initiative to repeal Prop 209, but the state’s voters rejected the change by 57% to 43%.
When reached for comment, Chemerinsky told Fox News Digital: “I am sorry that someone took a video of my class discussion and copied it in this way. The law school strictly adheres to Proposition 209 in all of its hiring and admission decisions.”
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Chemerinsky has previously noted that race is a factor in college admissions.
“I think the court has got it just right for the last 45 years,” Chemerinsky told Fox News Digital last August. “Colleges and universities have a compelling interest in having a diverse student body and should be able to use race as one factor among many in admissions decisions.”
Last November, The New Yorker writer Jay Caspian Kang quoted Chemerinsky as suggesting that institutions will find ways to favor certain minority groups, “that cannot be shown to violate the Constitution.”
“What colleges and universities will have to do after affirmative action is abolished is find ways to achieve diversity that cannot be documented as a violation of the Constitution,” the academic said. “So they shouldn’t use race explicitly. They should make sure their admissions stats don’t reveal race use. But they can use proxies for race.”
University of California, Berkeley entrance sign at the corner of Oxford Street and Center Street in Berkeley, California. (iStock)
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During the debate over the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, he claimed that Republicans had “no plausible basis for opposing her.”
Several commentators on Twitter condemned the new video featuring Chemerinsky’s affirmative action comments, arguing that it highlights a larger problem in American society.
“Berkeley Law School dean and professor admits it’s easier to use racial discrimination in faculty hiring than in school admissions because the latter has metrics,” Anti-woke commentator James Lindsay tweeted. “He says he will commit perjury in court, which is a felony. Leftists think they are above the law.”
“Should be grounds for a lawsuit — you know it would be if he used the same tactics to prevent minority hiring. (And in fact, whites are a minority in California.),” wrote The Spectator columnist Daniel McCarthy.
McCormick professor of jurisprudence and Princeton academician Robert P. George noted that this is allowed to happen because there are no conservatives on the faculty to push back and speak out.
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“What Dean Chemerinsky reveals here in the most glaring way is the lack of diversity — diversity of viewpoints — on his faculty,” he tweeted. “He can say to them what he says to them if they break the law *only* because he can count on them to share his ideological commitments.”
Alexander Hall is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected].
