Editorial | Chapman cannot escape John Eastman amid continuous press coverage

Photo illustration by DANIEL PEARSON, Photo Editor

Punch the name “John Eastman” into the Google search bar and what comes up?

At first, you’ll be greeted by masses of articles about the conservative attorney’s two-page memo, which was essentially a step-by-step guide for the Republican Party to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Scroll a bit further and you’ll reach his widely-debated Newsweek op-ed on the eligibility of Vice President Kamala Harris, which was since updated with an apology from the magazine for contributing to the spread of birtherist, xenophobic sentiment through its publication. 

But worst of all is the Wikipedia sidebar at the top right of the page, which continues to identify Eastman as a “former professor and dean at the Chapman University School of Law.” 

As publications ranging from the New York Times to Reuters have continuously covered the topic, Eastman — who functioned as then-President Donald Trump’s campaign lawyer — is still attributed for having worked at Chapman. Though Eastman retired from Chapman Jan. 14, his name and unflattering legacy continues to be ingrained in the fabric of the university.

This is in part self-inflicted; it would appear Eastman wants to make this fact well-known. Hell, it’s still in his Twitter bio.

Eastman’s abrupt resignation from his 20-year-long career at Chapman can be mainly credited to when he propagated claims of election fraud onstage with Rudy Giulani, Trump’s personal attorney, at a rally preceding the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot.

A House of Representatives committee investigating the fatal event in Washington D.C. recently issued a subpoena to Eastman following the release of his memo. Similar demands for records and testimony were directed at five other ex-Trump administration officials — who Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, attributed as some of “the former President's closest allies and advisors.”

In addition to galvanizing an insurrection under his professorial title, Eastman also filed the university’s address as well as his Chapman email and phone number with a Dec. 8 Supreme Court Case, for which he would be representing Trump in proving the election was illegitimate.

If there’s one consistency in Eastman’s infinite timeline of heinous acts, it’s that he has absolutely no qualms with using the Chapman name for political leverage. And up until last year, Chapman administration actively let him.

Though it’s been almost a year since the lawyer has been tied to the university in any capacity, in that time, students have seen an exhausting slew of media coverage shedding light on Eastman’s neofascist ideologies and association with alt-right extremist groups, all while continuing to contextualize him as a former Chapman faculty member. 

In the time between his arrival at the university in 1999 and his departure earlier this year, Eastman became chairman of the board at the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) — one of the nation’s most well-funded anti-LGBTQIA+ rights groups. In one particular speech to the Family Research Council — another homophobic organization centered around family values, Eastman speaks on NOM’s behalf defending a Ugandan law that would make homosexual acts punishable by life in prison.

Charming stuff, we know. But it doesn’t end there. 

For the better part of his career, Eastman has been a senior fellow deeply involved with the Claremont Institute — a once-revered Republican think tank that now devotes its efforts to providing pseudo-intellectual credence to the conspiratorial nonsense of Trumpism. The organization’s president, Ryan Williams, pretentiously believes the goal of this organization is to “save Western Civilization” through discrimination masked in staunch idealism.

Seriously. This is a real quote from Williams describing the Claremont Institute’s perception of American politics: “The Founders were pretty unanimous, with Washington leading the way, that the Constitution is really only fit for a Christian people.”

Eastman’s political career is just as long as it is egregious — so why did it take until 2021 for Chapman to take action?

The university’s ambivalence toward the matter was exemplified in their feeble request for Eastman to remove institutional affiliation from any government documents related to the Dec. 8 court case. The act was essentially a slap on the wrist amid calls from faculty and students for the professor’s immediate dismissal.

Similarly, despite allegations of hate speech from the Chapman community following the publication of Eastman’s Newsweek opinion, President Daniele Struppa released an Aug. 17 statement condoning faculty’s right to freedom of speech in yet another display of habitual passivity.

In fact, Eastman has been outright revered by the university for his accolades in the past: from receiving the honor of Professor of the Year in 2002 to being recognized for Faculty Excellence in Scholarly and Creative Activity in 2013. 

Chapman does not appear at all interested in acknowledging the moral reprehensibility of Eastman’s actions from past to present, nor the fact their sustained employment of Eastman is equally problematic. 

Eastman’s statement on his retirement claims he and Struppa “enjoyed a strong working relationship” up until his resignation. He then went so far as to applaud Struppa for his continued defense of both him and academic freedom in general.

This obviously does not reflect well on the university; it paints a picture of an institution that is at least somewhat complicit — if not entirely sympathetic — to the dangerous beliefs Eastman and his cohorts continue to propagate. 

So let’s make it clear: we have absolutely no desire to be associated with Eastman, let alone a perceptibly Trumpist university. 

And as students who have invested thousands of dollars to study at this institution, we fear our degrees may be devalued by this continued affiliation.