Chapman U. Law Prof John Eastman Resigns After Pressure Campaign Over Trump Rally Appearance
“It is with mixed feeling that I announce my retirement from Chapman University today.”
Professor John Eastman attended the Trump rally last week but did not participate in the Capitol Hill riot. The school faced tremendous pressure from its faculty to fire him for this. The university president refused to fire him.
Eastman has now resigned.
Eastman announced his resignation and retirement at The American Mind:
John Eastman’s Statement on His Retirement from Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law
It is with mixed feeling that I announce my retirement from Chapman University today. Apart from prominent visitorships at the University of San Diego and the University of Colorado Boulder, my entire academic career has been as a professor and Dean at the Chapman University Fowler School of Law.
During my tenure as Dean, the law school achieved the highest national ranking it has achieved to date, moving from 163rd to 93rd in that short three-year period between 2007 and 2010. I wish Dean Parlow much success in regaining and surpassing that high water mark.
Eastman offers some pointed criticism of his detractors:
I have also enjoyed a strong working relationship with the University’s current President, Daniele Struppa, dating to my Deanship when he was serving as the University’s Provost and Chancellor. And I applaud his defense of me in particular and academic freedom more generally in this recent controversy.
But I cannot extend such praise to some of my “colleagues” on the campus or to the few members of the Board of Trustees who have published false, defamatory statements about me without even the courtesy of contacting me beforehand to discuss. The political science faculty, for example, made numerous false statements of fact and law in their diatribe against me. They asserted, for example, that I have made “false claims” about the 2020 presidential election which “have no basis in fact or law and seek to harm the democratic foundations of our constitutional republic.”
Had they bothered to discuss the matter with me, they could have learned that every statement I have made is backed up with documentary and/or expert evidence, and solidly grounded in law. For example, it is a fact that partisan election officials and even partisan-elected judicial officials in numerous states altered or ignored existing state laws in the conduct of the election, the instances of which are well documented in the petition for writ of certiorari I filed in the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of the President.
My friend @DrJohnEastman has announced his resignation from Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, where he once served as dean.
His statement is an important read for our troubled times. Woke ideology has corrupted the American academy beyond repair. https://t.co/Lq8jy9zOAg
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) January 14, 2021
Chapman University President Daniele Struppa released this statement:
Statement from the Office of the President
“After discussions over the course of the last week, Dr. John Eastman and Chapman University have reached an agreement pursuant to which he will retire from Chapman, effective immediately. Dr. Eastman’s departure closes this challenging chapter for Chapman and provides the most immediate and certain path forward for both the Chapman community and Dr. Eastman. Chapman and Dr. Eastman have agreed not to engage in legal actions of any kind, including any claim of defamation that may currently exist, as both parties move forward.”
It’s ironic that higher education, an industry that now finds itself mired in a culture of protests and demands, has finally disapproved of a demonstration.
The ideological line has never been more transparent, and if you follow higher education news, you know that says something.
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Comments
Why are conservatives such wusses?
It’s less gauche to turn over your law school to communists than to actually fight them.
Oh well. Off to the club for a cocktail – if he’s not ambushed by antifa/blm and murdered.
What an idiot.
Geesh…no wonder we are where we are
Professor Eastman should sue over a hostile work environment and for libel-defamation. He can greatly enhance his retirement and punish the SOBs at the university.
There has to be pushback, people behind this stuff need to be punished.
Yes, he should, but he will not. He stated in his announcement that he had agreed that he would not bring legal actions. He will honor his word. He appears to be such a man.
Maybe he will pop up elsewhere.
Eastman’s statement reads like an American version of something out of a struggle session.
At least he was allowed to meekly question the methods of some of the fascists allowed to teach at this “university”.
But But….. There Were NO Left Wingers?
Urging rioters “we got to get this **** burned” and “you guys are ****ing savage – Let’s go!” among others is not “being just there to document.
…
Oh, and he was “accompanied”, it appears, by people who work for certain major news media who were also caught on tape
…
Because not only the Capitol but the office buildings have “portico-style” doorways which are extremely difficult or even impossible to breach, and thus simply weren’t breached without serious amounts of force using tools of some sort such as a battering ram, large crowbars or explosives — none of which were present (they’re sort of hard to hide, you know.) Therefore the obvious has to be true: Someone — or multiple people — on the inside let them in, deliberately.
…
And finally, this is the first “riot” I’ve ever seen where the persons doing the “rioting” stayed within velvet ropes while peacefully walking through a museum-style display hall, again, documented on video, and where police officers are seen directing traffic peacefully from one place to another.
Unwinding the leftist narrative(s) exposes leftist conspiracy to incite violence. So, who aborted Ashli Babbitt?
Around half a million assembled to support the President to audit the vote in several Democrat jurisdictions where there were irregularities, perhaps fraud, and hundreds, perhaps dozens, who may or may not be “Trump supporters” protesting near or inside the capital. And the press spinning yarns, presumably hoping to incite violence. Just peachy.
This is the persistent problem of the conservative right…we are not in it for the long run. Many fight to win an election or cultural skirmish and then go back to their work and lives while the left is all in, all the time!
Everytime somone in our rank quietly exits they permanently cede valuable turf to those that would do us harm.
Without a continuous and cohesive desire to win we will slide into the darkness.
If I had the opportunity to address one question (plus follow-up) to Dean Matthew Parlow of the Chapman University School of Law it would be this: “Do you teach a course or courses on the Law of Evidence in your law school?”
Following his answer “Yes. Obviously. Are you nuts?” my follow-up would be “Why? Why do you bother? In today’s environment, at your university and the entire academic environment, evidence and facts are completely irrelevant. Accusations are sufficient to drive people out. So why bother teaching Evidence? What’s the point?”
I read Prof. Eastman’s statement and I know that no member of the law faculty signed the letter against Prof. Eastman. But, as Rev. Martin Niemoller reminded us, sometimes remaining silent doesn’t cut it. Where were the law professors…especially those teaching things such as evidence, constitutional law, libel and slander law etc. etc…sallying forth to defend their colleague on the basis of law and evidence? THAT would have been a proper example for their students.
A commenter above (empiricallyobvious) makes a good point about people on our side lacking “staying power”. While I agree with the point (strongly) I would like to comment on the label “conservative right”. Though I have long since had my fill of Jonah Goldberg, he made a point some years ago that I still agree with. Regarding use of terms “right” and “left” as shorthand for describing people’s supposed ideologies, he said he thinks it is stupid to identify people’s political stance on the basis of “…a 240 year old seating plan in the old French Estates-General”. He’s right. It has become easy to dismiss our ideas by simply saying we are of the “right”. It is an excuse to avoid engaging intellectually on ideas. It also allows them, as I said in the first part of this comment, to avoid analyzing the facts and the law. They can attack Eastman and when anyone speaks in his defence, they are to be ignored because they are “right-wing”.
In the immortal words of Kuiil “I have spoken.”
“Right” and “left” are a lot less stupid than “red” and “blue”. At least “right” and “left” have well-known historical meanings, because the accident on which they’re based happened so long ago, so we can all know, more or less, what we’re talking about. “Red” and “blue” are not only based on a much more recent and random accident, only 20 years ago and only in one country, but they’re also confusing because in most of the world those colors already have a long-standing meaning which is the exact opposite.
I am not 100% convinced the designation of Republicans as the “red” side was and “accident”. Given that (as you point out) the socialist side is universally the “red” side (they even call their armies by that colour) I have long suspected the US media tried to provide the Democrats cover by assigning “red” to the GOP. Unproven supposition of course.
Cheers
BML
“in most of the world those colors already have a long-standing meaning which is the exact opposite.”
Not only in most of the world but also in the US until quite recently. And that is precisely why the MSM decided to swap the colors.
Those that place too little value in liberty and the individual and too much value in the collective (whether communists, socialists, or fascists) always seek to destroy language. Nothing is more dangerous to these false ideologies than the ability to clearly communicate and reason. After all the truth will set you free. So nothing is more important to these ideologues than to not allow truth to be freely communicated.
The red vs blue divide reminds me of the factions in the Byzantine empire which coalesced around the colors (blue vs. green) worn by the rival chariot-racing teams.
Actually, I kinda like the way this suggests the fanboy nature of so much of our current politics.
Who is John Galt?
Some guy who gave a speech over the radio.
Traitors to the Republic have won on the Chapman campus. They railroaded Dr. Eastman and have proven Liberal/Marxist/Communist dissent is a winning tactic.
Saul Alinsky is proud!!
Now more of Trump’s legal team is under attack including loss of legal degrees.. such as with Harvard.
I can’t see how Harvard can rescind a degree. Best as I know a degree isn’t conditional on anything other than completing the prescribed course of study
Divorce can’t come soon enough, you can’t live life next to these people who want to wipe out your life.
That scumbag pelosi is coming at us hard and fascistically:
https://www.citizenfreepress.com/breaking/pelosi-taps-nakedly-partisan-trump-hating-general-to-investigate-capitol-siege/
We need to respond in her face. Marches, mocking her – showing NO intimidation. NONE.
Any trial of a Trump supporter in DC is a sure guilty verdict. DC juries have a history of being partisan
That is what it was like in cities, having people moving in who where slobs, whose children ran half the night, who stole anything that wasn’t nailed down, and who vandalized just for the joy of it.
From there it went downhill, assaults and murders.
It was common to read about a victim being sued, and juries of those people handing much if not all the victim’s assets to those criminals.