It’s disguising crime as one’s patriotic duty.

Thanks Jane !

I like how he groups intellectual integrity with justice and humanity.

problem is, if Cal fires him he’s just going to go across the bay to hang out with Condi et al in the Dark Tower of the Hoover Institution.

Nice letter, but it would have been even stronger if he had cited UCB’s own Faculty Manual.

There are plenty of mortal sins in academia that will get you canned, tenure or no tenure, and Yoo’s mangaged to violate a bunch of them.

At Cal, that would be the ultimate proof that they had done the right thing by tossing him out.

The OPR report shows someone who should not have a bar membership let alone responsibility for training future lawyers.

I think that it is a valiant attempt by DeLong to get the university administration to do what they should have done long ago. The attempt, of course, is going nowhere because if the administration had any desire to do something they would have done it long ago. They have their desires set on the big donors and probably the big donors want yoo to have even more influence, perhaps as head of the law school.

Bawhaahahhahah!

SO true!

Academic freedom – in fact, tenure – is either sacrosanct (near-absolute), or it’s meaningless. If the guy’s proved guilty for his behavior, he can be fired.

ACLU? What do you think?

Yoo was the architect of the wall that both Meirs and Gonzales hid behind for the last six years of the Crime Administration. Not only did he write what were essentially unAmerican documents, but his work helped foment the fear that the 1600 Crew passed on since 9/11. (They’re gonna kill your babies and eat your innards if we don’t torture ‘em).

Even if Yoo is removed from his UCB Professorship he’s virtually guaranteed a soft landing at some “leading” wingnut thinktank, drawing big dollars and appearing on Fox and MTP as a “legal scholar/analyst”.

John Yoo hardly represents anything like Justice, but rather the ideals of 1933 Germany writ large.

problem is, if Cal fires him he’s just going to go across the bay to hang out with Condi et al in the Dark Tower of the Hoover Institution.

Where would you rather see him, Blub; a bastion of ideological dogma or teaching a new generation at a university?

true…. but Yoo would be on friendlier ground in the Dark Tower. You know, in all the time I spent at that school, I never once went inside that building… always kind of assumed some great evil was going on within its windowless ediface. Kind of like Barad-Dur in the Tolkien books.

problem is, he’d be corruption a new generation in Palo Alto, where he would no doubt also have teaching responsibilities… better to just to send him to jail, where his corruption will be limited to his bunkee Bubba.

Jo Fish !

Yoo will make lots of $$$ or mebbe he’ll end up like Abu, but in public, he will be treated with disdain.

The political establishment would have us believe that (Republican) politicians can place themselves above the law by making crime a policy, for (Republican) policy is unpunishable, whether its criminal or not.

An interesting comparison would be Ward Churchill who dared speak ill of american policy.

Enjoy these:

http://www.latimes.com/news/lo…..3410.story

http://www.firejohnyoo.org/200…..ant-t.html

I think that it is a valiant attempt by DeLong to get the university administration to do what they should have done long ago. The attempt, of course, is going nowhere because if the administration had any desire to do something they would have done it long ago. They have their desires set on the big donors and probably the big donors want yoo to have even more influence, perhaps as head of the law school

How do they begin to justify keeping a professor who has been so soundly and ethically criticized by the Federal Justice Dept.’s Office of Professional Responsibility?

“War Criminal” … this chant has to follow all these criminals whenever they step into public view.

About damn time……

I’m sure Ward Connelly, on the Cal Board of Regents, can be counted on to defend him….

Per the Wikipedia on “Revocation of Tenure”:

Tenure can only be revoked for cause, normally only following severe misconduct by the professor. Revocation is usually a lengthy and tedious procedure. In Colorado, where the question of what constitutes grounds for dismissal of a tenured professor arose as the result of the controversial comments of Ward Churchill regarding the victims of the 9/11 attack, grounds for dismissal are “professional incompetence, neglect of duty, insubordination, conviction of a felony or any offense involving moral turpitude… or sexual harassment or other conduct which falls below minimum standards of professional integrity.”[citation needed]

In 1994, a study in The Chronicle of Higher Education found that “about 50 tenured professors nationwide are dismissed each year for cause”.[7] A study in the Wall Street Journal published January 10, 2005 estimated that 50 to 75 tenured professors (out of about 280,000) lose their tenure each year.[citation needed]

While tenure protects the occupant of a academic position, it does not protect against the elimination of that position. For example, a university that is under financial stress may take the drastic step of eliminating or downsizing some departments.

See also the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) website.[8]

That is perhaps the most important point. Removing Yoo from the education system is step one. Step two – disbarment. Then, let the rotten scoundrel go to The Hoover Institute or The Heritage Foundation or The Coors Mellon Group or the Aspen Group or The American Enterprise Institute…

Is John Yoo in a tenured position?

Yoo’s Torture Memos are the legal equivalent of Wall Street’s credit derivative swaps: invented in order to serve and legitimate dehumanizing, corrupt social structures.

If Berkeley fails to dismiss Yoo — after fully documenting his violations of their Code of Professional Conduct — then they’ll reveal themselves as the academic equivalent of Countrywide Mortgage: fraudulent, bloated, and basically worthless.

Here’s hoping Berkeley steps up to the challenge; without doubt, their administration realizes that they need to cover their asses to ensure Yoo doesn’t have a toehold to fight their decision.

Thanks Jane.

btw, having a great time following you on twitter.

A more effective and meaningful sanction than firing him from the university would be to try him in a court of law and if found guilty put him in prison.

digg is open.

Teaching a new generation?
He’s in a law school, not teaching third graders. One would assume that by the time they get to law school, his students have had time to develop whatever ethical dimension they’ll bring to life.

Maybe easier to get him disbarred?

.
“Political beliefs”? This guy was an automaton, a bent legal machine with no core values or beliefs at all. They should investigate his superiors, and whoever hired him & trained him. And his Mom.

Anyway, they’ll be laying everybody off at Cal by Friday. And anybody else who works for the Dumbinater and his Repukelickin’ buddies. I hope the Co-op or Cody’s is hiring.

Here’s how many jobs your Red State legislators in DeeCee voted against, exactly? Check ‘em.
.

Yooseful link.

actually no.. I strong disagree. Credit derivative swaps were invented by people with strong math skills as a means of helping companies hedge risks and banks to increase liquidative (and therefore the availability of capital). The people who invented them never profited from their use. They were appropriated and mis-used to rip people off, and maybe the people who invented them should have thought about the potential for misuese, but they didn’t and so maybe they are partially responsibility. But to call “credit derivatives” intrinsically evil is sort of like calling plastic explosives intrinsically evil ’cause terrists figured out that they were also useful in helping blow things up that weren’t supposed to be blown up (they are extremely useful in construction and demolition).

Torture can never be intended to be anything but evil. There is no appropriate use of torture. The professors who came up with credit derivatives may hold some responsibility for their abuse by traders and CEOs, but Yoo can never argue that his memos were misused by shrubco. They were used for the purpose they were intended.

I doubt Yoo, after being dismissed (I’d guess after a hearing) would be hired by Hoover. Hoover does at least have one token liberal in Joe McNamara, a prior Chief of Police of San Jose. I’d think Yoo would be so discredited by dismissal, after the report, in what ever form, is published, that any bonafide think tank wouldn’t want him. That’s not to say the RNC wouldn’t send him a welfare check every month

ugh.. I can’t type today.. in #33, “strongly disagere” and “increase liquidity” and “misuse”

Let him go to Hoover. That is where dinosaurs go to die.

Per the University of California’s code of faculty conduct, the part pertaining to “The Community”:

Ethical Principles. “Faculty members have the same rights and obligations as all citizens. They are as free as other citizens to express their views and to participate in the political processes of the community. When they act or speak in their personal and private capacities, they should avoid deliberately creating the impression that they represent the University.”

Types of unacceptable conduct:

1. Intentional misrepresentation of personal views as a statement of position of the University or any of its agencies. (An institutional affiliation appended to a faculty member’s name in a public statement or appearance is permissible, if used solely for purposes of identification.)

2. Commission of a criminal act which has led to conviction in a court of law and which clearly demonstrates unfitness to continue as a member of the faculty.

Sorry to disagree, folks. I know whereof I speak, because I’ve been involved in a tenure-revocation hearing.

de Long is wrong on this one. When professional misconduct is at issue, the judgement has to be made by qualified individuals. The people who are qualified to judge his conduct at DoJ are other lawyers, and particularly other lawyers who practice constitutional law.

So, (in my opinion) the right order is this:
1. Disbarment or other legal disciplinary action: Yoo has been judged by his peers to have violated the professional standards of the legal community.
2. Dismissal from Berkeley for cause: the faculty/administration do not have to judge his actions, because they’ve already been judged by his professional peers. Now it’s a simple matter of asking if the moral failings rise to the level that justify dismissal. If the answer is ‘yes,’ then you vote to dismiss him.

Yes.

the guy was consigliere of a crime syndicate

Yes, Jane. That’s the difference. He’s criminally negligent and liable, no?

Can’t believe he hasn’t at least been disbarred yet.

I must be to dim to understand this stuff.

Wouldn’t tenure be protected re: unpopular beliefs, but NOT against illegal actions???

good point, but are you saying that Yoo designed his legalisms before he had a client to serve? Was he acting as a lawyer?

try again, hon. my keyboard’s acting up today also. must be gremlins about. *g*

I’m not to sure about that. The reason Scooter’s a bit of a pariah is that he committed a crime that the rethugs actually, on a good day, have to recognize as a crime (obstruction). The neocon doyennes that form the majority of Hoover’s backers don’t think justifying torture is a crime at all. They genuinely support the use of torture as an instrument of state policy. At worst, from their perspective, Yoo exercised his free academic expression in the service of his country. At best, he’s a Jack Bauer-type hero. Nah, they’ll hire him in a jiff.

tenure is hardly sacrosanct, those tenured enjoy their distinction so long as the institution deems the tenements have not been compromised

tenure is what the instiiiitution said ikt was when tenured, if yoo cooompromised tenure he iks EASILY dismissed

And what if you’ve got a DoJ without the political will to address the situation? It sort of puts you at their mercy when it comes to doing the right thing.

To a point. The minds of these new law students are still young. They are most assuredly malleable/impressionable.

There are many ways to do things. If Yoo makes a good impression… if the case law he teaches provides examples of the kind of law Yoo prefers… that’s what the students will learn. If he is a good showman, perceived as a master of his craft… the minds can be his to mold and shape.

Another interesting approach is that Yoo remained affiliated with and represented the values and standards of UC while at the DOJ. In fact, it’s cklear that the methods he was advocating were EXPERIMENTAL and untested by any scientrific methodology…and they were being imposed without the consent of the prisoners.

That violates a whole suite of UC, State and Federal regulations.

http://cphs.berkeley.edu/content/guideline.htm

In a sense John Yoo was using his position at DOJ to encourage a violation of those standards. If I, as an anthropologist, took a leave of absence, practiced experiments on prisoners oin Indonesia, and then tried to return to campus I would be subject to severe discipline. It’s appalling that Yoo gets off scott free. This was not merely “free speech”…it was actionable advice. He was coordinating the violations.

You’re right. However, academic matters are completely within the purview of the University. Assign him no classes and no students and remove him from any faculty committees. Let the rest unwind at its own pace.

Seems like a waste of money, but better to be wasting the money than spending it for positively damaging purposes.

Or Norm Finkelstein who was denied tenure at DePaul after he took on Dershowitz and pissed off the Israel lobby.

Yeah, it does.

Firing a tenured professor is intentionally a difficult thing. But it appears now that l’affaire Yoo is going to referred (by Obama’s DoJ) to State Bars in which Yoo is licensed. I would assume that he’s licensed in California.

By the way, citizens can prefer bar complaints. But I’m not the least bit certain how far a private citizen’s bar complaint against Yoo would go.

the reason yoo must be dismissed is not about punishing him for his crime of convenient opinion

the reason is so that theree is official recognition thatgt not only were his opiniooons wrong and irresponsible but that he they become soundly rebuked so that the weight of presidential presidence has been layed to waste

I might hope disbar foollooows ooor preceeds..yoo must be discredited so that no person can claim it was simply.a matter of opinion

From what I’ve seen, Yoo doesn’t seem all that qualified a lawyer. He never should have gotten tenured. Another question is, who in their right mind would take his classes? If I were hiring lawyers I might red-flag any resumes that included Yoo’s influence. Having ideas people don’t agree with is one thing, but being a monster against humanity is extreme.

okay, it’s relatively sacrosanct.

this citizen of Berkeley demands it!

I think you are at error. There are campus and UC systemwide regulations that affect conduct and discipline that are distinct from those that relate to conduct within ones profession. UC has much more refined conduct regulations than the ABA.

I can go along with that. Give him an office converted from a broom closet, assign him to every nasty committee that exists, assign his classes to be taught at midnight or some other highly popular hour.

There are all sorts of creative ways to render him innocuous until the Bar gets around to acting. And I believe they will get around to it eventually.

It’s not the “criminalization of politics” as apologists would have it, it’s the “criminalization of crime.”

I’d say they’ve accomplished the “DE-criminalization of crime”, personally.

Yes, it does. Unless someone actually moves to prove in an authorized forum that he did something contrary to law or to his legal obligations, then his ability to earn a living practicing law or retaining his teaching position will not be affected.

We sort of our at the mercy of legal officers when it comes to prosecuting crimes.

who in their right mind would take his classes?

Everyone who wants a top post in the Jeb DoJ, starting in 2012.

it appears now that l’affaire Yoo is going to referred (by Obama’s DoJ) to State Bars in which Yoo is licensed.

true?

link please!

geewillies! When I was a freshman, the gov’t prof. was a Marxist, openly. But he didn’t take action as Yoo has. He was open to discussion and covered the topic of government thoroughly, despite his own beliefs. Hence, no tenure problems that I know of.

Yoo intentionally and deliberately crafted illegal “law”, for direct use during the practice of governmental actions, did he not?

He would be derelict in his duty to uphold existing law??? Or those who knowingly ordered him to do what he did would also be remiss??? Where was Congress? Oh, that’s right; asleep at the switcharoo.

Can we please have a mulligan?

Of course there are. The State Bar associations generally have tighter ethics codes than does the ABA.

But the issue is a question of professional misconduct. If Yoo had been caught snorting coke off a dead stripper’s back (thanks to the soon-to-be DIL for that imagery) then it’s a matter of personal misconduct. But that isn’t the deal, the issue is professional misconduct. The faculty of the University of California (generally or the Mother Ship in particular) aren’t qualified to judge professional misconduct. Not even all the faculty at Boalt are qualified to judge on the matter.

badaboom!

I haven’t read today’s paper yet. Last night Olberman or Maddow made some reference to going to the State Bar associations. I was grading papers at the time and didn’t have my ears entirely open.

You’re right. However, academic matters are completely within the purview of the University. Assign him no classes and no students and remove him from any faculty committees. Let the rest unwind at its own pace.

Here’s the other side of the coin: where are his students coming from and why do the parents not see that it might not be good training if you’re getting it from someone who is, shall we say, ethically challenged? They can bring a horse to water, by why are they drinking from the poisoned well? Especially a well that has already been so labeled!

ah. you’ve been there. heh.

Per Newsweek:

If Holder accepts the OPR findings, the report could be forwarded to state bar associations for possible disciplinary action.

who in their right mind would take his classes?

Everyone who wants a top post in the Jeb JEB! DoJ, starting in 2012

JEB! are the dork’s initials. John Ellis Bush! There is a lot of background on this guy. He got his start in Miami with a Cuban/American Real Estate developer. The two got together, borrowed a few million to build an office building and defaulted on the note. In that era, JEB! was quoted as saying that he was going to be a very rich man one day.

I think part of the problem for me here is that we all know quite a few simply awful tenured professors, including lawbreakers – to my knowledge, I know one, in physics at a major public university, who openly calls his Middle Eastern graduate students “Terrist trainees,” one, in polisci at an Ivy League, who openly lauds fascism as the ideal governmental model for the contemporary era, using as many words, and one, at Yoo’s institution, who seduces one female student per semester like clockwork. Despite many efforts, none of these people have had their tenure threatened much less been dismissed. I’m sure there are many exceptions, but they are still exceptions.

Apparently John Yoo found his rationale for telling Bush he could do whatever he wanted to as long as it was in the name of national security in the president’s powers as commander in-chief, found but not enumerated in the Constitution, and Congress’s grant of powers to prosecute those responsbile for the 911 attacks. Interestingly, there is historical precedent for Mr. Yoo’s views. Unfortunately, the precedent can be found in the German Enabling Act of 1933 (look it up). The Reichstag, in a coerced and kneejerk response to allegations that Russia was responsible for the burning of the Reichstag, in the name of national security, effectively turned the government over to Hitler. The Fuhrer promised to use the power responsibly and only when absolutely necessary. We all know how that turned out.

Interestingly, the Nuremberg Court would not let defendants use the excuse that they were following lawful orders in doing Hitler’s unspeakable bidding. In fact, by passing the Enabling Act of 1933, Germans had changed their constitution and, arguably, many Nuremberg defendant’s had been following lawful orders. What the Court knew was that some acts are so inhumane and heinous that they can never be justified in law. John Yoo, who may or may not have read the Enabling Act (I suspect he has) should be called to account for the evil he has done. Or else, knowing what we now know about the White House’s involvement in sanctioning torture, under what authority have the low level soldiers at Abu Graib been tried and punished?

I’ve been in a Dean’s doghouse before, badly enough that he would have fired me had I not been tenured. He settled for stalling my career, instead. And I’ve seen those sorts of actions taken against others.

There was a lot of background on W too, but that didn’t prevent him from becoming prez.

We’ve been in department budget circumstances so dire, result was the same. Lack of seniority will prompt similar, which is particularly galling when others are walking zombies useless in the classroom or anywhere else. I didn’t mean to offend, just to commiserate. There are indeed many ways upper mgmt can be nasty and unfair while still operating within legal specs, unfortunately.

election, or even mock-election, can cover a multitude of sins.

He would be derelict in his duty to uphold existing law??? Or those who knowingly ordered him to do what he did would also be remiss??? Where was Congress? Oh, that’s right; asleep at the switcharoo.

Another very good point. It is bad enough that there are still parents who are willing to let this guy teach their kids corrupt practices. It is beyond evil that the Congress did not use their checks and balances to stop this usurpation of powers. Now they have left it to a current President to do something no president has done before him: cede power that was wrongly acquired (although it was freely relinquished by Congress) back to the legislative branch or any other branch.

I don’t think anyone has brought up Yoo’s move to be a visiting at Chapman. I think something is in the works.

Keine scheiss.

Shrub laid it all out. Then in 2003, Bushwhacked reminded us what a poltroon GWB really is, and Shrub was lightly revised to emphasize the point.

Unfortunately, not enough of us were listening to Molly. We miss you, Molly.

The professors who came up with credit derivatives may hold some responsibility for their abuse by traders and CEOs, but Yoo can never argue that his memos were misused by shrubco. They were used for the purpose they were intended.

I’m waiting for Yoo to repeat (again) that he never foresaw that the Torture Memos would be used the way they were used. He had no idea what might happen after he developed what Cheney, Addington, and Chertoff wanted. Uh, huh.

The quants who developed CDOs didn’t always know how the tools would be used. But once they saw what was going on, they also don’t appear to have stepped in to stop it — with very few exceptions.

Both were developed to please certain very forceful interests, but if you actually look at some of the assumptions and code in those CDOs, it’s clear that they were based on false assumptions about how the world functions. As were the Torture Memos. Short term, they gave the people in power everything they wanted — long term, they’re stupendously self-defeating and create dynamics that spin way out of control.

Here’s the link.

John Yoo crafted legal opinions intended, in bad faity, to exonerate torturers. And the Obama administration is apparently relying on those opinions to justify its decision not to prosecute low-level torture, as announced by Panetta.

Oh yeah. I’ve seen the budget numbers for us for FY 2010, and it’s not pretty. Universities have it particularly tough in that salaries and fringes make up most of the budget.

When the Lege says, “Ya gotta cut x%,” you have to look at positions if x is very large. We’re going to be especially hurting because we don’t have any open positions to hold open. Ouch.

Oh yes. I do fear the Reaper. JEB! could very well get elected (or selected in a squeaker), if the Media will ordain it. Do you think the Media would? The Media is so very liberal, after all. /s

JEB!/Palin ‘12

Exactly when did the basic legal degree become the qualification to teach in a law school? Physicians have substantial post-graduate training before they join medical school faculties, many have picked up an academic doctorate along the way.

Yoo went from Harvard to Yale (or was it the other way around?) to a clerkship to Berkeley. What’s up with that?

Don’t ask me. I don’t know nuttin about that.

Obama being greeted like he’s a rock star.

Many attornies wanting to teach go beyond a JD and get a masters in law

Sad to say, whenever I hear government employees talk about the “legacy costs” of the auto workers in retirement, I think it’s time we start to talk about the “legacy costs” of government. That would include all of Congress and their staff insofar as they get a pension, all of the WH employees from the Janitor to the President, the cabinet, etc all the way throughout the bureaucracy. When they expect auto worker retirees to give up part of their benefits, they first need to ask which of their own benes would they be willing to give up?

That’s it, bargaincountertenor (great name!). Once Yoo is disbarred, I believe he cannot teach law at Chapman or anywhere else. The disbarring process will be set in motion soon. Of course, he’ll join some think tank, perhaps not one of the major ones like Hoover, but he’ll land on his ass.

Something that scares about Yoo is how little affect he has, and how indifferent he seems to any of the critiques. Self-protection or sociopathy?

Thanks. I’m a PDQ Bach fan, so a hat tip to Peter Schikele is in order.

apologies in advance, but i get a kick out of that just right now.

maybe in a year, i’ll be acting sour, but now he gives me hope.

i’m a shameless pushover. *g*

Well, I agree with you. This is quite a bit of hope to absorb right now. Lots of good stuff I heard in there. Wonder how much of it Congress will insist on leaving on the cutting room floor!

I’m glad he addressed speculators, who have been the bane of consumers for too long. Also, those who knowingly bought more than they could afford and those scheming Suits. I don’t know how he is going to Police this, however.

I have to agree. It’s apples and oranges. No question here that Yoo does not deserve a position in a reputable institution, and one wonders what pervsion of ‘political correctness’ got him his job there in the first place. But unless he’s convicted of a war crime, which is unlikely unless he attends a conference in Europe, it’s hard to see how he can be defrocked.

I think the more useful procedure is strong censure, followed by the old Amish practice of shunning. The guy’s toxic. He should be treated that way.

Here Here! spelling police to aisle 89 please. ahem

Schickele?

sorry. another BIG fan here.

Uh-Oh! OT Story-time:

We took our 2 YOUNG kids to hear/see/experience Schickele with the Cleveland Orch. many years ago. Our kids (one so young he had to stand to see between the shoulders of the poeple in front) laughed heartily at the great man’s first musical joke; and immediately, numerous pouty adult faces swiveled to glare as one at such an horrific outburst, by children, yet, at THE SYMPHONY yet!

Oh the horror!

I don’t have to tell you there were sheepish looks on all but the most dense of those adult music-illiterates, as they slowly but surely caught up with the youngsters and realized it was SUPPOSED to be funny, advanced, sophisticated, but HILARIOUS, even to the smart little 7 year old in the 9th row.

A golden moment for the parents of that little tyke, who is now principal oboe of 2 regional orchestras, free-lancing in other orchestras as well as chamber music, and looking higher in a wicked economy, but with promise and hope. He’s stubborn, and dedicated. He’ll get there.

Meanwhile, half-time job at Starbucks affords him health care. Kudos to Starbucks, more humane, and less elitist than perhaps you knew.

Tres cool, Adie.

I started out as a music major, wanted to be a trombonist in one of the majors. I realized that while I am talented, winning one of those seats was a luck-laden process. So I relinquished my music scholarship, but continued playing.

My trombone and I got all the way through my MSc. I got to play tromboon in the ‘orchestra’ backing Schikele while I was working on my master’s. It was absolutely one of the funniest things I have ever done. I’ve still got the reed I used, but I had to return the bassoon bocal :(.

Kudos to Starbucks. I didn’t realize they provided health care for their employees. I take back 61% of the nasty thoughts I’ve had about them, and 83% of the nasty things I’ve said about them.

BTW, I’m still playing and still knocking pieces off my lifetime list. It’s a great avocation.

People are so stuffy at The Symphony. An orchestra I played in once did a concert in jeans sitting on haybales. It was partly a gimmick (we were playing Copland’s suite from Rodeo), but partly to try to make a point.

A few years ago I got to knock Husa’s Music for Prague, 1968 (the orchestra version, still haven’t done the original :() off my lifetime list. The program theme was “Pulitzer Prize Winning Music.” We had some very difficult music on the first half (”Apotheosis of this Earth”, Husa; and Music for Prague), but we had Copland’s big orchestration of Appalachian Spring to close the concert. Half the audience left at intermission. Even knowing that dessert was coming, they couldn’t try to take in the contemporary music.

For many folks, The Symphony and The Opera are places to be seen by the right people, rather a place to enjoy great art. I tell myself that it’s their loss, but I’m not sure I believe myself.

it’s their loss

I couldn’t agree more. One of the orchestras sonny plays in has a very active kiddy-event program, not just sitting up on stage, but on the gym floor, and coming out into the audience and v v to demonstrate and share some quality time with the youngsters. They just LOVE it – musicians and children alike. They keep the orchestra small for those events, and bus the kids in from all over. What a circus. Makes me glad I’m not a chaparone.

I’m impressed and pleased you stuck with your music – Masters yet! Bravo! It will never leave you, no matter how many other things you do. You’ll always have it, even when only entertaining you from a secret place in your brain while a dean drones in your face. heh.

Our other son got music degree also, then set about making a career as an indispensable “go-to” problem-solver guy in high-stress communications, mostly via computer. His tuba sits there in the middle of his apartment, begging for attention, but he still tinkers with his composing and arranging.

A ho-hum string player once told me, “a little Copeland goes a long way.” Now that’s just pathetic. Maybe if she had exerted herself just a tad, it would have reached her. I certainly knew from that revealing comment, that she hadn’t reached her audience. Sonny is very fortunate indeed that both conductors he works with most are superbly talented, as well as delightfully UNstuffy and engaging personalities, so the audience and musicians all respond in kind. I’ve seen the “early-leavers” also occasionally. Their loss indeed.

But the issue is a question of professional misconduct.

Why is that true? Tenure is an academic privilege…it’s granted by a University, not a professional association. I seriously doubt that the ABA has rules in place to deal with a law professor showing up to class, giving an F to a student he didn’t personally like, or failing to attend faculty meetings. Certainly tenure decisions may be informed by the violations adjudicated by a professional body, but most academic positions don’t even have a professional accredition body. The American Anthropological Association doesn’t license or accredit Anthropologists. The APA doesn’t license psychologists, one doesn’t have to belong to the ALA to be a librarian or teach library science.

In fact, I suspect that some law schools might benefit from having ethicists or political scientists teaching in them that are NOT lawyers. Other departments frequently realize that they benefit from having individuals outside the discipline to provide perspective or criticism or new techniques or ideas. Still one expects those individuals to follow the ACADEMIC requirements of teaching, research and standards of behavior (in action) that tie them to the University.

When one authorizes individuals to torture that goes beyond “freedom of speech”. Those words are not merely an intellectual exploration of ideas. They are a “spur to action”…like “Burn down the building!” As well, context is critical here. These were legal advisories, not a journal article available for fellow academics to criticize and challenge. His statements provided the justification under “the color of law”. When Boss Hog says “Lynch Him!” he can’t argue that it’s simply “free speech”. His authority makes it “action”.

If an attorney who is teaching law can be shown to be giving legal counsel that is legally incorrect to the degree that it can be shown to be either incompetence or lying, doesn’t that have to meet some standard for firing? Incompetence does in every other job (except the presidency, then it just needs to be politically expedient).

Sorry, lots of ‘thugs never develope a moral sense. It’s why they’re ‘thugs.

How do you get the idea that the faculty of a law school aren’t qualified to judge this? I think you mean authorized, and if they were empowered by the university (as, say, a board of inquiry) they would be fully authorized and uniquely so, by the university.

I’m unsure what you want me to understand from your comment.

A year ago Brad DeLong had different thoughts in 2008 regarding Yoo at UC Berkley. I cannot find any sort of response to similar questions in comments there. Which leads me to ask, what changed DeLong’s mind?

Yes tenure is important, no vital, to University life. The concept of teaching unpopular idea in the face of popular / conventional wisdom is one to be held at all costs.
It is just that this is one of those “d*mn’d if you do, d*mn’d if you don’t” situations. As in, you have a hypothetical tenured biology professor teaching evo-devo at your uni and you find out that this hypothetical professor has a side-line in writing position papers for the Discovery Institute.

No, I meant what I said, and I said exactly what I said, unqualified to judge. Yoo was writing his opinions on constitutional law. He is scholar of constitutional law. A scholar of consumer law (say) is better qualified than I (a mathematical statistician) do judge Yoo’s professional competence, but still not fully qualified.

If you want to judge someone’s professional competence, you have to go to their peers for an assessment. This isn’t the Renaissance any longer, and we’re very short of Galileos and da Vincis.

The issue against Yoo is a matter of professional misconduct, and the only people qualified to judge are his peers: the other scholars of constitutional law. I would place a bet that there are more historians and political scientists at Cal qualified to judge Yoo’s scholarship than there are lawyers qualified to do so at Boalt.

To cinammonape:

If Yoo were accused of violating some aspect of the rules governing personal conduct, then an appropriate committee of faculty is qualified to make the judgement. That isn’t the case here. No one is saying Yoo hasn’t met his classes, has failed every student, or is sleeping with a live male student or dead female student. Nor has he (yet) been convicted of a felony. What he is accused of is professional misconduct, and specifically misconduct in the scholarship that generated the so-called torture memos.

Judging that matter is a task for his professional peers, because they are the people with the appropriate knowledge, skills and experience to evaluate the matter. I wish it were otherwise. I am university faculty member, and Yoo’s conduct has stained all of us. I want him gone, too. But I want him gone for the proper reasons, and sent packing by the appropriate procedure.

That requires that at least one Bar Association discipline him for misconduct.

As has been briefly mentioned, Yoo is on leave from Berkeley and is teaching International Law at Chapman in Orange County — where he has had a much warmer welcome than ever he did at Berkeley.

Torture Memo Author Finds Friends and Foes at Chapman U
Posted by Matt Coker in A Clockwork Orange, Naranja News, OC Media, Politics

…Perhaps some of you have a conservative uncle who says stupid things. You know, like the U.S. is not in debt to China, or that Barack Obama is a socialist or that George W. Bush won his presidential elections.

Mine recently repeated the Bill O’Reilly/Rush Limbaugh/Attila the Hun yarn about all the students and professors at UC Berkeley being flaming liberals.

…Perhaps Uncle Knuckle-dragger can be dragged over to Chapman University, where Yoo is teaching while on temporary leave from UC You-Know-Where. Indeed, the Los Angeles Times (a.k.a. Pravda) blogs that Yoo may have come south to escape ultra-liberal Berkeley, where city leaders branded him a war criminal and human rights activists erected a billboard to denounce him.

Yoo has denied Berkeley’s liberal tilt had anything to do with his move south, saying he just wanted to spend time on a smaller, newer campus, to experience living in Southern California, to tower over Jim Doti. Okay, I made up that last one.

But local peace activists say they plan to give Yoo a little of the old ultra-nonviolence, and guess who is egging them on? None other than their lefty NorCal counterparts, who plan to come on down to join in the yammerin’. The website FireJohnYoo.org has all the sordid details.

I imagine once he’s done at Chapman he can cruise on over to Pepperdine where Ken Starr is Law School Dean and have him a grand old time, eh? Never go back to Berkeley at all, but he’ll stay on the faculty forever.

Fine, let him. He’d fit in better over there anyway. Just because it’s at Stanford doesn’t mean Hoover’s worth a damn and is anything more than another American Enterprise Institute. I’m even starting to hear disparaging comments about it on TV, of all places.

Fired from a law firm? Fine. Fired by the client? Fine. Fired by the university? Nope. If a tenured math professor cannot balance her own checkbook, or a tenured economics professor runs his own business into the ground from sleazy and unethical practices, it’s not the university’s business. Reason not to hire? Fine. Reason not to grant tenure? Fine.

When incompetence appears to incapacitate a tenured professor, it’s a flag. But due process follows.

As a way of getting at the unfettered truth, isn’t tenure plainly the opposite of torture?

Thanks for the link, Jane.

Prof. DeLong’s argument would be far stronger if law professor Yoo was also disbarred attorney Yoo.

El Tigre Del Agua is at the mother ship.

Not really. Tenure is protection against retaliation for unpopular opinions. It’s possible to hold opinions that are well thought-out and unpopular.

For example, I happen to think that it’s a good idea that college students learn their statistics from people who are trained in the science of data. That is, trained in statistics. A mathematician who has never studied statistics is not qualified to teach statistics. She might teach the arithmetic of statistics perfectly well, but statistics is more than arithmetic. I made the mistake of stating that opinion publicly, which pissed off a bunch of people. That got my Dean pissed off at me, pissed off enough (when combined with some faux pas) that he really, really wanted to fire me. But I was tenured, and he couldn’t fire me. What’s more, if you check with my professional peers you will find that most of them hold similar opinions. They’re smarter than I am, they know to keep their mouths shut.

If you were to check with general faculty, you’d find the opposite opinion. Most people think a statistician is someone with SAS or SPSS on their desktop machine. So, obviously, anybody who can do research can teach statistics for whatever discipline. And obviously, a mathematician can teach statistics. Had the Dean been allowed to put it to a selected panel of faculty, I would have been gone.

Grievance Project is absolutely right. The argument for removing Professor Yoo from the faculty of Boalt Hall is much stronger if Professor Yoo were disciplined by the Pennsylvania Bar Association. Even a suspension of his license would be sufficient, but I would expect a disbarment to result. As I understand the canon of legal ethics, about the only things Yoo missed violating were the fiduciary responsibilities.