The Board of the Irvine Faculty Association sent the letter below to Chancellor Gillman and UC Berkeley Law School Dean Chemerinsky concerning the appointment of the first Executive Director of UC’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, on May 17, 2018.
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Dear Chancellor Gillman and Dean Chemerinsky,
The Board of the Irvine Faculty Association is writing to express concern about the recent appointment of Michelle Deutchman as the first Executive Director of UC’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. The Center is a high-profile effort on the part of the University to demonstrate that it can provide a forum in which heated issues can be debated in and open and transparent way. This is an important venture, and it is imperative that the Center operate without the appearance of indifference to or endorsement of limiting constitutionally protected speech. Given these aims, we have three main concerns about Ms. Deutchman’s appointment: her limited expertise as a scholar of free speech and academic freedom; her background as an attorney for ADL; and the lack of transparency of and faculty involvement in her hiring.
Ms. Deutchman appears not to have the academic and/or scholarly record or experience needed to be the Executive Director of a major research center–to work independently with “the broad authority of the UCI Chancellor to implement [its] programmatic aims,” including designing and managing programs, conferences and others function in a leadership position “engaged in shaping the national dialog about free speech.” Although she is described as a “scholar” in the press release announcing her hiring, Ms. Deutchman does not appear to publish academic research or to work as a scholar, save that she has taught as an adjunct at UCLA. Given that the Center’s goal is to encourage and fund research, Ms. Deutchman’s lack of credentials raises doubts about her suitability for the position. Further, as the UC Compendium makes clear, the establishment of such a Center is normally accompanied by widespread review and commentary. The faculty and the community deserve to know that Ms. Deutchman is the best leader we can have for this nationally visible Center. Moreover, as far as we have been able to determine, confirmed by conversations between the Council of UC Faculty Associations and the system-wide Committee on Academic Freedom (UCAF), there has been no consultation with faculty or open reception of candidates in this search.
The opacity of the search and apparent unpreparedness of the candidate put the spotlight instead on the message being sent by this selection. Ms. Deutchman has worked for the ADL, an organization that while describing itself as devoted to fighting bias, has a self-avowed history of partisan political behavior. The ADL has been involved in the campaign against BDS, the boycott movement to pressure Israel on political grounds. The ADL in its public documents considers BDS a movement against Israel’s right to exist, and says that “College and university campuses have become battlegrounds” in this political campaign. Whatever one’s position about BDS, it is a free speech matter: to select a staff member of an organization that opposes such speech and seeks to influence governing bodies in the US, including the UC Regents, on this matter to be the defender of free speech is troubling, and sends at best an ambiguous message about the purpose of the Center. The ADL has been similarly controversial in public on account of its political positions. This year, for example, African American and Arab/Muslim American organizations have protested the ADL’s selection to take part in anti-bias training at Starbucks. The ADL was then removed from this training, as reported by ABC News and other national media. Selecting a member of this organization to lead the Center could connect the university to the public controversies about free speech and racism in which the ADL has been involved.
We therefore ask you to:
- provide a full accounting of the process used to select the director of the Center, and explain the committee’s rubric regarding the scholarly qualifications required for the position;
- explain how the hiring process and the planned governance of the Center fulfill the requirements set out in the UC Compendium;
- explain how someone coming from an organization with well-known partisan positions regarding key free speech issues and race relations can be expected to act in an impartial and effective manner as an Executive Director of a free speech center.
If proper procedures were followed and Ms. Deutchman is qualified for this important position, was properly vetted and chosen from an appropriate pool of candidates, and has demonstrated and will confirm her willingness and ability to separate herself from the positions of the ADL, then the appearance of impropriety in this matter can be dispelled; if not, we call upon you to participate in a public forum about the purpose and future of the Center and the hiring of its Executive Director.
Sincerely,
The Executive Board of the Irvine Faculty Association