John Yoo’s Secret Class
It turns out that Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo’s spring semester California Constitution class is being held in an undisclosed location:
Yoo, who has been criticized for memos he wrote under the Bush administration justifying alleged torture practices, was scheduled to begin his first class of the semester Tuesday night and is the only professor in the law school whose class location is not listed on the law school’s class schedule. Anti-war groups World Can’t Wait and Fire John Yoo! have targeted Yoo since he returned from sabbatical last fall and criticized the Boalt Hall administration Tuesday. About 25 people, some clad in orange jumpsuits, gathered Tuesday outside Boalt Hall Dean Christopher Edley’s office, demanding that the location of Yoo’s class be made public.
Yoo’s is the only class not listed. Above the Law’s David Lat asked Yoo to comment on the classroom controversy, he sent them this rather amusing reply:
The location of the class, of course, is available to the students who want to take it. If the protesters want to go, they could always apply for admission as 1Ls and pay the full tuition like everyone else. They will find that it is harder to compete for admission with our smart and accomplished students than it is to make a ruckus.
Says Lat:
Right on. Free speech is great and all, but if the protesters end up going to law school, they will learn the importance of time, place, and manner. We agree with the editorial board of the Daily Californian, surely no bastion of conservatism, which opined that the protesters are “hurting the students more than the professor. It’s not unreasonable for them to have to wait until class is out to picket and make their views known.”
Via Inside Higher Ed, “this is not the first time a professor there has had to keep his class meeting schedules secret. A professor injured by the Unabomber in 1982 did not have his class schedule posted for years after that.”
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6 Responses to “John Yoo’s Secret Class”
I certainly hope the University takes every reasonable measure to protect Professor Yoo from the rabid hate-mongers who would do him harm, here and abroad.
Poor Yoo, a real victim, of campus lefty brownshirt thugs.
He committed no crime and therefore should serve no time but he broke the morality of the nation in many's view and this is about the type of life I would wish for him. Actually I would prefer he be unable to find any decent paying job and be thrown down with the rest of us just in time for that “undefinable” word torture to be turned on the citizenry which it invariably will be.
Given the current employment situation of lawyers, maybe the ones not enrolled are the really smart ones.
I certainly wish him no harm. At the same time, it's hard to take pity.
Yoo’s been faculty at UC Berkeley for 17 years—since before I went there. And despite his far right-of-center politics, the commie, lefty, *add disparaging remark about liberals here* university administration retained him allowing for lengthy breaks to serve as clerk to Justice Thomas and in the Bush Administration. I think the university has done a yeoman’s job at assuring his safety and looking beyond ideological BS to recognize him as a scholar. I can only hope others recognize that as well. But you have to wonder, would Bob Jones or Regents University have done the same? I have my doubts, but want to be proven otherwise.
And for the record, I don’t like Yoo’s interpretation of executive power one bit, but I’ve read both of his books and respect him as an academic. I’ve had many professors I fervently disagreed with, yet can honestly say I learned more from those courses than any others I’ve taken. That’s the hidden message in Lat’s comment I believe.