Jonathan Zasloff
        Law

            In just about any other context, the political donations, work history, and ideological commitments of UCLA Law professor Jonathan Zasloff would place him on the left end of the political spectrum.  But in a faculty populated by professors who refuse to donate to the Democratic Party until it becomes more radical, Zasloff looks almost reasonable.

             One glaring sign that Zasloff rejects the top-to-bottom political radicalism practiced by his Law School colleagues are his documented pro-Israel sympathies.  A quick look of the long list of anti-Israel petitions  (and their many UCLA signatories) emphasizes just how unfashionable Zasloff’s stance is.  More encouraging yet, Zasloff indicates occasional opposition to the academic fads that are rapidly destroying the classical undergraduate education.  Zasloff has remarked,  

“the decline of the history of American foreign policy as a subject of academic study – [is] not because it isn’t still critically important, but rather because it is simplistically dismissed as studying dead white men.  The ‘new social history’ that focuses on studying the working class, unemployed people, minorities, women and gays is critically important as well – but the academy, in its quest for novelty, has really thrown the baby out with the bathwater.”  

 Zasloff’s ritualistic disclaimer about social history being “critically important” aside, such a bold declaration from a respected UCLA academic is a minor miracle. 

             Less heartening, of course, is the balance of Zasloff’s record, none more discouraging than his own participation in the chronic petitioneering of UCLA faculty.  Thankfully, the subject of the petitions Zasloff signed at least far within his field of study.  Law, however, is a broad area.  Thus, virtually every “controversial” judicial nominee of Bush’s two terms has felt the sting of Zasloff’s disapproval: UCLA alum Justice Janice Rogers Brown, former Interior Department Solicitor William G. Myers, III, and very recently on September 1, 2005, Supreme Court Chief Justice nominee John Roberts.  Zasloff even signed on to a letter pleading with Senate Republicans not to exercise the “nuclear option” that would allow the Republican majority to render an up or down vote on Bush’s nominees.

             Zasloff’s views, a cynic might argue, are driven by no higher a cause than basic party loyalty.  Indeed, there is no small amount of evidence to suggest that if the Democratic Party says ‘jump,’ Zasloff asks ‘how high?’  Before joining the UCLA faculty, Zasloff served several years as a senior policy advisor to the (Democrat) Speaker of the California Assembly Bob Hertzberg.  And, Federal Election Commission political contribution records show Zasloff has made $6,400 in contributions since 2002, all but $400 earmarked for Democratic Party candidates.  On a state level, Zasloff has contributed $2,150 to California candidates, all Democratic recipients, since 2000.  The most interesting of Zasloff’s donations is a $1000 “late contribution” to his future boss Hertzberg’s Assembly campaign in 1998. 

            Whatever your views of Zasloff’s ideas, his skill as a writer and an orator is evident.  While attending The Harvard School, arguably the poshest private college preparatory school in Los Angeles, Zasloff won the National Forensic League’s 1983 H.B. Mitchell Trophy for debate on policy.  Zasloff then followed up this high school success by earning just about every academic degree he could lay hands on: a B.A. from Yale, an M.A. from Harvard, a Master’s in Philosophy in International Relations from Cambridge, a J.D. from Yale, and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 2000.  As a testament to all that education, Zasloff’s writing is pointed and effective, if not more correct for it. 

            One of Zasloff’s infrequent weblog postings tried to contrast the records of Clinton and Bush on foreign policy and international terrorism.  Zasloff concluded that in all ways, “Clinton was way better.”  Clinton responded masterfully to the Cole bombings and the threat of Al-Qaeda, Zasloff claimed, by assigning Richard Clarke to counter-terrorism duties.  But when Bush took office in January 2001, he committed the near-criminal of putting Clarke in “a more subordinate role.”  Dusting off his hands, Zasloff seems satisfied that these facts alone have made his case.  However, reassigning an anti-terrorism holdover to a “subordinate role” hardly compares with Clinton’s effective refusal, despite a near guarantee of success, to authorize the assassination Osama Bin Laden.  Zasloff also claimed that Bush “has shamelessly and deceitfully used 9/11 to his advantage; he has accused Democrats of a lack of patriotism; he has puffed himself up as the war president.”  It’s no surprise then to read Zasloff’s war cry: “Bush needs to be relentlessly and unsparingly attacked for every single failure of this administration.”  Such ferocity!  Too bad Zasloff’s old boss Bob Hertzberg didn’t call out this attack dog during Hertzberg’s unsuccessful campaign for mayor. 

            On balance, Jonathan Zasloff is certainly not the worst professor at UCLA.  In fact, if his private political ideals remain at least nominally separated from his teaching and his academic inquiry, he’ll already be doing a lot better than most.  Let’s hope that his support for free academic inquiry continues to expand at least as quickly as his fervor for Democratic partisanship.