Christopher Edley

Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste Discuss Campaign Race and Gender Wars

PBS Bill Moyers Journal, May 16
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05162008/watch.html

Maria Echaveste: Hillary Clinton did not get a fair chance with both media perspectives and the subtleties on gender discrimination. I think … there’s a zone of protection around Senator Obama on race where none existed on gender.… It also raised all kinds of pretty misogynistic views about women and that woman in particular. And a lot of women are angry about it.

Chris Edley: The real challenge of leadership is to find ways to talk about the things that divide us and help us figure out how to bridge those not by ignoring them but by, in some sense, overcoming them, resolving them, accommodating them.… I’m not for ignoring race in the sense that it can’t be ignored. It’s going be there no matter what. If you ignore it in the sense of simply not talking about it then you’ve failed to do anything effectively to deal with the cancer.

Christopher Edley Congratulates Citation Award Winner Dale Minami

www.hapihour.org, April 25, by Keith Kamisugi
http://www.hapihour.org/?p=181

“Dale’s tireless commitment to civil rights has been an inspiration to his fellow lawyers and to the many disenfranchised groups he has so brilliantly represented,” said Berkeley Law Dean Christopher Edley, Jr. “His lifelong work as a champion of social justice fighting various forms of discrimination represents the very best of his profession, and is a shining example to everyone at Berkeley Law.”

Christopher Edley, Stephen Bundy, and Howard Shelanksi Say New Faculty Hire Will Help Boost Bar-Pass Rate

The Recorder, April 24, by Petra Pasternak
http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=1208947728506

“Though our first-time pass rates remain markedly higher than the overall pass rate for ABA-accredited law schools, we do not regard the 2007 results as acceptable,” Edley wrote in a memo to third-year students and LL.M.s on April 17. “We do not yet know whether those results reflect statistical variation or real changes in preparedness among our graduates.”

Howard Shelanksi noted that 82 percent is not bad compared with the overall pass rates for the California bar. But that’s little comfort to Boalt students, he added. “We want to push back up to our historic levels of bar-pass.”

“The bar is the mother of all closed-book in-class exams,” Bundy said. “I think the hiring of Kristen [Holmquist] provides a chance for us to look at the way these issues play out through the curriculum.”

Christopher Edley Emphasizes the Role Race Plays in National Issues

NPR, Tell Me More, March 26, by Michel Martin
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89109192

“When [Barack Obama is] governing, race will be important simply because it’s required to address it, I believe, in order to forge the kind of moral and political consensus we need on issues whether it’s immigration or whether it’s when do we use troops abroad…. If you hide from the issue of race than you’re going to fail in your obligations as a leader to build bridges that will connect people across lines of class and color.”

Christopher Edley Addresses Race and Gender in Presidential Campaign

Newsday, March 24, by Tom Brune
http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/monday/news/ny-usrace235624517mar24,0,4961041.story

“Obama’s success has exploded cynical preconceptions about the willingness of voters to cross the color line,” he said, “although it would be wrong to suggest that either race or gender is irrelevant….” The question is, Edley said, “Can the political process get beyond those simple but powerful, demography-driven narratives to appreciate the character, values and policies of three real people”?

Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste Criticize Ferraro for Campaign Gaffe

NPR, All Things Considered, March 12, by Michele Norris
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88154039

Echaveste: She diminished herself. Basically she says that I was selected as a vice presidential nominee because I was a woman. It had nothing to do with qualification. And I found that just appalling. And so she crossed a line because in some way she left the impression that somehow Senator Obama has reached this particular point solely because he’s black and that’s just unacceptable.

Edley: It’s also incorrect…. Barack did not call her a racist. I don’t think anyone in the campaign that I know of has called her a racist. I think that it’s undoubtedly the case that his race, like Hillary’s gender, has been a political plus and a political minus. I think that if this year has taught us anything it’s that we need to revisit a lot of the conventional wisdom about the way that race can play into politics.

Christopher Edley Criticizes Clinton Administration’s Civil Rights Record

New York Times, Feb. 2, by Mark Leibovich
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/us/politics/02race.html?_r=1&sq=edley&st=nyt&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&scp=2&adxnnlx=1203107452-2LvWFLDcr/nUk+6l9dUctQ

“The policy record of the Clinton administration on civil rights is more mixed than people generally acknowledge,” said Christopher Edley Jr., the law school dean … who served in the Clinton administration. He cited Mr. Clinton’s unwillingness to intervene in Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands died in tribal war, and his signing of what Mr. Edley called “a horribly punitive crime bill.”