UC-Berkeley Law School Degrades Itself Even More

No wonder Brad DeLong has had no luck persuading Christopher Edley to get rid of the malfeasant John Yoo. As Bob Somersby observes:

Christopher Edley thinks he’s one of your “betters.” It’s hard to believe, but that’s the exceptionally low-IQ framework this self-proclaimed member of the elite enunciated in Sunday’s piece. According to Edley, rubes like us should want our “betters” in important posts, like the post in which Kagan will serve:

EDLEY: The tension between elitism and populism is embedded in our national DNA because America rejected the model of a monarch ruling by divine right in favor of an iffy experiment in democratic self-governance. So now you are responsible for choosing your leader. Do you want someone like you or someone better than you?

What an astonishing framework! But so it goes when people like Edley spends decades inside institutions like Harvard, convincing themselves that they and their peers are “better” than all the rest of us rubes. [formatting in original]

Kagan, like Yoo, “has excelled in a meritocratic system, one that is selective yet far more open than in generations past.”

Bonus quote from Edley:

The gatekeeper power of such institutions is why it was so important to desegregate them (using affirmative action, among other tools) and why virtually all leaders of great universities talk about diversity and access.

Yep. Elena Kagan is All About Diversity.

At least Edley is consistent:

Dean Edley rolls embarrassingly off the tracks.

Read the whole thing.

Full disclosure: My wife’s cousin is working at Berkeley now. Fortunately, she’s not at the Law School, or I would worry for her reputation.