Open Letter to the University of California, Irvine

Department of History University of California Irvine

Professor of Comparative Literature, UC Irvine

Associate Professor, Religious Studies, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California

Editor-in-Chief, the Asian American Literary Review

Do not let these funding/endowments agencies take control of academic affairs too.

If these chairs are filled in the way it seems UC Irvine has planned, the unfortunate and perhaps unwitting scholars who occupy them will hit the ground running with absolutely zero credibility, and the reputation of the UC system will be permanently damaged. This move will hurt your institution more than it could ever possibly help it. And that's before even considering the (entirely justified) First Amendment suits it may provoke.

Professor of Sociology, Simmons College

University of Exeter

University of California, Berkeley, class of 1982

Merit should count, not your origins.

As a retired professor of anthropology at UCR, who has taught at UCI and used to work with a lot of the anthropology faculty there, I have serious and direct concerns about this.

Dartmouth College

PhD student, University of Basel

Professor of English, University of California, Santa Barbara

Professor, Seattle University

Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture, Michigan State University

Associate Professor, Mount Holyoke College

Associate Professor, Mount Holyoke College

SOAS, University of London

Mathematician and Founder, Leora Trust