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.”