I tend to think of at least the law school at Chapman as somewhat right-wing, based on some of its faculty (like neocon pundit Hugh Hewitt) and the fact that the school is in Orange County, which is something of a (neo)conservative area. That might explain some of the “toady students,” although the students at Boalt might not be too supportive of protesters, either, especially if the protest got in the way of the class time they are now paying near-market for, and to the extent that students self-select into John Yoo’s classes (except for first-year classes like Con Law, which are assigned).

As well, that mild demeanor was not just an act for the camera. He’s like that in person, at least with students, actually kind and caring and a good teacher and advisor, so unless one was already foursquare convinced of his evil, I could see cognitive dissonance resolving as “don’t do this on class time.”

I don’t know what John Yoo is doing at Chapman. I’m pretty sure he has tenure at Berkeley. I’d like to think that he’s taking neocon refuge from the protest heat at Berkeley. On the other hand, maybe it’s for other reasons. If he really needed to take neocon refuge in Southern California, he could have gone to Pepperdine (in Malibu!), whose law school “boasts” Kenneth Starr as dean.

I was thinking the same thing – there is still a fairly large minority of people in the US who would agree wholeheartedly with Yoo’s position. I would imagine that most people who wanted to actually take a course of his (as opposed to protesting) would be more likely to agree with him.

Why he has students — well don’t a lot of people agree with Yoo?

One could organize a permanent picket line of Boalt Hall, with people picketing Yoo on shifts.

But I’ll bet the University has already thought of that and interdicted it on the campus sides of the building – and made a deal with the city police to interdict it on the city sides.

My point was more what Paul suggests, which is, why aren’t these guys being hollered and screamed at all day long by everyone, everywhere? Why do they suffer only an occasional interruption, and why does Yoo have any students whatsoever?

And: so that dismissive and condescending tone is actually a gutless tone. That thought is going to be useful to me this academic year.

I saw Robert McNamara talk at Harvard in ’95 or ’96, when he was flogging his book, _In Retrospect_. The crowd lined up around the block to get into the talk, which was (like the book) lively and informative and insightful, although revealing of McNamara’s curious obtuseness to his own complicity in the shaping of events. (As in the 60s, McNamara was a brilliant analyst but lacked a kind of emotional intelligence that might have brought him back from the brink.) In the Q & A session afterwards, a Vietnam Vet (complete with the army jacket look) stood up and just started screaming and denouncing RM, “my buddies died because of you!” etc. McNamara was PI$$ED OFF–which was a rather surprising and naive reaction, IMHO (what did he expect? Everyone was going to say, “OK, now we understand and forgive you?”) He started screaming back! He was a man’s man, which of course was probably a big part of the problem, but Yoo illustrates that masculinity isn’t sufficient, or maybe not even necessary, in war criminals.