NEWS FROM MIAMI LAW: I got this email from Tony Varona, the outgoing dean of the University of Miami Law School, giving his side of the story:
I see that you have covered my termination.
I thought I would reach out to suggest a correction.
I did not fire Prof. Ravicher, nor decide not to renew his contract. We had him scheduled to teach this past spring semester and had planned for him to teach through at least the next academic year. We would not have decided whether to renew his contract until late in the fall 2021 semester, and his support of President Trump would have played no role in the decision whether to renew him. (We have many other community members here who supported President Trump.) In fact, I told Dan that it was important to me as dean and for our entire law school community to have conservative perspectives represented on our faculty. I do not know why Dan continues to say otherwise.
Prof. Michael Froomkin covered the matter on his blog. It’s an accurate account.
As Michael puts it: “He’s recently taken to social media – and even Fox TV – to claim he’s been fired for his pro-Trump tweets and other speech, or is about to be, or may not have his contract renewed when it expires. As far as I have been able to ascertain, at least the first two of these claims are simply false. The fate of the third lies well in the future.”
Hmm. Ravicher certainly seemed to think he was being fired. This entire affair just gets stranger. All of the InstaPundit coverage of this odd matter can be found here.