Michael V. Drake

Michael Vincent Drake (born July 9, 1951) is an American university administrator and physician. In 2014, he became the current president of The Ohio State University. From 2005 to 2014, he was the chancellor of the University of California, Irvine. While UC Irvine chancellor, Drake controversially fired and rehired legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of the then-new UC Irvine school of law. At Ohio State, Drake has been criticized for firing the university's marching band director Jon Waters after a report criticized the band's "sexualized culture."

Drake grew up in Englewood, New Jersey, until moving with his family to Sacramento, California. He attended Stanford University and UC San Francisco.

Drake was an ophthalmology professor and associate dean at UCSF. In 2000, Drake became the University of California system vice president for health affairs.

University of California, Irvine chancellorship

In 2005, Drake was appointed as the fifth chancellor of the University of California, Irvine (UCI). He officially began his term on July 1, 2005. His annual $350,000 salary remained unchanged from his previous position at the Office of the President, up from $70,000 paid to the previous UCI chancellor. As of 2010 he earned $374,969.32.

Chemerinsky firing and rehiring

Drake's first major firing scandal was to fire the Dean of the UCI law school, Erwin Chemerinsky. After signing a contract on September 4, 2007, the hire was rescinded by UCI Chancellor Michael V. Drake, because he felt the law professor's commentaries were "polarizing"; Drake claimed the decision was his own and not the subject of any outside influence.

The action was criticized by both liberal and conservative scholars who felt it hindered the academic mission of the law school and violated principles of academic freedom, and few believed Chancellor Drake's claims that it was not the result of outside influence. The issue was the subject of an editorial in The New York Times on Friday, September 14. Details emerged revealing that UCI had received criticism on the hire from the California Supreme Court's then-Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who criticized Chemerinsky's grasp of death penalty appeals, as well as a group of prominent local Republicans, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who wanted to stop the appointment. Drake traveled over a weekend to meet with Chemerinsky in Durham, North Carolina, where he was a professor at the Duke University School of Law at the time, and the two reached an agreement late Sunday evening.

On September 17, Chemerinsky issued a joint press release with Drake indicating that Chemerinsky would head the UCI law school. On September 20, 2007, Chemerinsky's hire was formally approved by the Regents of the University of California. In 2014, Chemerinsky said that he and Drake had since reconciled.

Ohio State University presidency

On January 30, 2014, the Ohio State University Board of Trustees named Dr. Drake as the 15th president of The Ohio State University. He began his tenure at the university on June 30, 2014. At the time of his appointment, he was part of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the board of directors of NCAA Division I. In March 2015, Drake was appointed to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame board.

Waters firing

Drake fired Ohio State marching band director Jon Waters on July 24, 2014, after a university investigation found that the band's "sexualized culture" was "inconsistent with the University's values and Title IX requirements." The university stated that there were "serious cultural issues and an environment conducive to sexual harassment within the Marching Band", and that the band director "was aware or reasonably should have known about" it. Waters has sued for reinstatement, accusing the university, Drake, and a provost of discriminating against him by disciplining him differently than a female employee and denying him due process. To date, Drake has stood by his decision to terminate Waters as marching band director. As of January 2015, the university had spent nearly $1 million in taxpayer-provided funding in defense of the decision and subsequent actions. Invoices requested under Ohio's public records laws were heavily redacted, leading to more questions about what work the university had paid certain firms to perform.