Erwin Chemerinsky, “a well-known liberal expert on constitutional law” according to the Los Angeles Times, was hired and then quickly fired by the Irvine campus of the University of California. The culprit, says Chancellor Michael V. Drake, was “conservatives out to get” Chemerinsky. Later on, an “emotional” Drake, “his voice at times quivering,” reversed his position and “said there had been no outside pressure and that he had decided to reject Chemerinsky” himself because the professor’s views were “polarizing.”

Given the unreliability of Chancellor Drake’s public testimony, it’s hard to know whether there really was a conservative cabal trying to take out Chemerinsky, or whether he was just the victim of a spineless administrator seeking to avoid controversy. Either way, the only decent thing for the university to do is to re-hire Chemerinsky, assuming he’d be forgiving enough to take the job instead of taking the school to court.

Controversy is the enemy of the typical university administrator. Their concerns are getting students in the door, extracting dollars from alumni, keeping politicians happy so the tax breaks stay in effect, and hoping parents don’t notice how quickly the cost of college is rising. Controversy causes the public to pay attention to what happens on campus, and that’s the last thing an administrator wants. If people are paying attention, they can’t get away with using heavy-handed tactics to shut down any speech that might offend somebody.

Typically, it’s the people on campus who have more conservative perspectives who run into trouble for not being “politically correct.” But that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen to liberals. And when it does, it’s just as odious.

The lesson is: if you create a hyper-politicized environment in which ideological litmus tests routinely affect the trajectory of someone’s career, there will come a day when those tests don’t yield results you favor.

If there was a concerted effort among conservatives to block Chemerinsky, they probably felt justified in doing so, thinking that they’d just be preventing the dominant campus thinking from dominating another campus. But it’s hard to argue for tolerance of your views when you’re damaging the career of a man whose only transgression is disagreeing with you.

Whatever the sequence of events that led to Chemerinsky’s firing, conservatives who believe that their views deserve better respect on campus must stand with him on principle.

And who knows? Maybe the next time a conservative professor runs into career trouble for his or her views, some decent-hearted decision-maker will think back to this story and remember how not to act.

Respect can be brought back to campus if only enough people have the courage to practice it.

Update: UC Irvine has re-extended its offer to hire Erwin Chemerinsky. As quickly as he was hired and fired, he was re-hired. If only all cases were handled this fast...