{"id":276532,"date":"2026-04-20T07:52:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T07:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/276532\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T07:52:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T07:52:06","slug":"the-ghost-of-john-eastman-haunts-chapman-the-panther-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/276532\/","title":{"rendered":"The ghost of John Eastman haunts Chapman \u2014 The Panther Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the five years since former Professor John Eastman retired from Chapman, he has been involved in cases brought to the Supreme Court<\/a> twice. And both times, shortly in tow, Chapman\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n

Most recently, Eastman\u2019s discourse on reevaluating the 14th Amendment<\/a>, which he has advocated for since 2005, has served as a blueprint<\/a> to President Donald Trump\u2019s efforts to regulate birthright citizenship<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In January 2025, Trump signed an executive order<\/a> to alter the conditions for birthright citizenship laid out in the 14th Amendment<\/a>. While the amendment states, \u201cAll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,\u201d Trump is advocating that this does not apply to children of illegal immigrants or legal temporary residents.<\/p>\n

The order has been repeatedly blocked by federal courts<\/a>, but in early April, the arguments<\/a> were brought before the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Eastman) is the modern originator of this particular argument about the 14th Amendment, and he\u2019s also the primary advocate from the last several decades,\u201d said Delp-Wilkinson Chair in Peace Studies Lisa Leitz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Eastman, who served as the founding dean of Fowler School of Law<\/a> from 2007 to 2010 and then as a professor before his retirement in 2021, has caused campus uproar on more than one occasion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Before the 2020 presidential election, Eastman published an opinion<\/a> on Newsweek<\/a> challenging then senator and vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris\u2019 citizenship.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer father was (and is) a Jamaican national, her mother was from India, and neither was a naturalized U.S. citizen at the time of Harris’ birth in 1964,\u201d Eastman said in the article. \u201cThat, according to these commentators, makes her not a \u2018natural born citizen\u2019 \u2014 and therefore ineligible for the office of the president and, hence, ineligible for the office of the vice president.\u201d<\/p>\n

The piece received much backlash for racism, xenophobia and perpetuating birtherism \u2014 a conspiracy theory founded in attempting to delegitimize Barack Obama as a U.S. citizen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapman associate law professor Nahal Kazemi<\/a> co-wrote and published a response<\/a> to Eastman\u2019s opinion in the Chapman Law Review<\/a>. Disagreeing with Eastman\u2019s interpretation, she argues that his definition would illegitimize many other politicians’ citizenship, including Trump\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time, most law professors and scholars in the field resoundingly rejected the argument made in the Newsweek article, but they didn\u2019t go into the details. They just said that this isn\u2019t a serious argument,\u201d Kazemi told The Panther. \u201cI thought, regardless of whether I thought it was a serious argument or not, we should go ahead and explain why it is incorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kazemi, who had been a foreign service officer and served a tour as a counselor officer, said there are only two situations in which one would be exempt from the jurisdiction of the United States and thereby from birthright citizenship: if they were born into diplomatic or combatant immunity.<\/p>\n

Diplomatic immunity frees foreign diplomatic agents and their families from U.S. criminal and civil laws. Combatant immunity exempts invading armies and authorized civilians, such as press or medical personnel, from the same laws. Neither of these applied to Harris\u2019 parents at her time of birth in Oakland, California.<\/p>\n

To show the faculty\u2019s opinion on the matter, Leitz led a petition<\/a> opposing Eastman\u2019s piece and sharing a counter viewpoint.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Faculty) were really horrified,\u201d she said. \u201cEspecially coming off of Black Lives Matter, to have someone questioning a Black woman\u2019s right to run for presidency on such a fringe legal idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Months later, after Joe Biden and Harris were elected president and vice president, Eastman filed a Supreme Court case<\/a> seeking to overturn the election.<\/p>\n

After his public advocacy to reverse the election, Leitz said many faculty members, such as herself, began calling for more extreme measures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is someone who is now using his capacity as a professional academic to promote ideas that are false, and he knows are false,\u201d said Leitz. \u201cSo that (faculty) saw as academic misconduct, and would potentially be a fireable offense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eastman\u2019s participation in attempting to overturn the election escalated when he spoke at the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren\u2019t calling for him to be fired until he crossed a line,\u201d Leitz said. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to have a different opinion, and it’s a whole other thing for it to be knowingly false, and that crosses an ethical line in both traditional academia and in legal scholarship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eastman\u2019s retirement from Chapman<\/a> was announced two weeks later, and he published his own resignation letter<\/a> on The American Mind<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He was suspended from practicing law in California in 2024 while under review for 11 counts of false election claims, pressuring officials and conspiracy to obstruct. He also had his license suspended in Washington, D.C.<\/a><\/p>\n

Eastman was disbarred<\/a> by the State Bar of California on April 15, 2026, but reportedly has plans to bring the ruling to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Despite his political track record, Kazemi views Eastman\u2019s impact on Chapman as minimal.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Eastman) is just not something that I see particularly relevant to my work or what my students are trying to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Yet, Leitz holds a counter view.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wasn\u2019t fired (from Chapman), he retired,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I think to some extent (Chapman) has to own it, unfortunately.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s ruling on birthright citizenship is expected in either June or July.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think at least five of the justices are highly skeptical (of Trump\u2019s argument) purely on the merits,\u201d said Kazemi. \u201cThere is no history or tradition of case law that supports the law that one has to be born to someone who has (the) legal status of lawful permanent residency in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the argument favoring the new interpretation of the 14th Amendment passes, she fears the outcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis would be an administrative nightmare,\u201d Kazemi said. \u201cTrying to figure out who is a U.S. citizen is very difficult if you can\u2019t rely on (the fact) that everyone who was born in the U.S. is a U.S. citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the five years since former Professor John Eastman retired from Chapman, he has been involved in cases…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-276532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}