DID THE BELL CURVE GET CHEMERINSKY?
By now, everyone who pays attention has heard about Erwin Chemerinsky being offered the job as the first dean of the yet to open UCI Law School and then having his employment contract yanked out of his hands.
To us at the CM PRESS it looks as though the bell curve got Chemerinsky.
In every age and place there is an orthodoxy of opinion--it is what you find at the center of the bell curve. Go against that orthodoxy at your own peril.
It's our guess that the political views at the center of the bell curve (the center area is approximately 68% of whatever is being graphed) in Orange County, are conservative or to the right of center (i.e. that they are right of where the center would be in some other areas). Okay, now don't slap your forehead and say "duh," about this. We know that everyone says OC is conservative, but since we haven't seen recent statistics on this, we're going to stick with "It's our guess...."
If this were San Francisco, the political views at the center of the bell curve would be liberal or left of center.
It seems safe to assume that Chemerinsky, based on things that he has said and written, may be out on the left leg of the bell curve a couple of standard deviations away from center in many of his views.
In plain English, this puts him out of the mainstream of OC and it creates a problem in attracting the big buck contributions that the new law school will need.
Of course, it's not just that Chemerinsky is out on the left side of the bell curve that is the problem. If he were too far out on the right side, the result would be the same. The middle always wants the left and the right to move to the middle.
The center of the bell curve is where you'll find most of everything.
Since the bell curve is a statistical concept, it can be no other way. That crowded center is the comfort zone in life and politics. It's also the area of stagnation and the status quo. But, that's the way it has always been and always will be...statistically speaking.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
