Tarnoff's Tarnished Tale

The second speech in the series was weak, I'm afraid. Peter Tarnoff is a nice guy, who did military/political strategy for Clinton, among others. He gave a barebones, carefully worded, extremely diplomatic review, with politically cautious excursions into almost-opinions.

He said nothing to me, and managed to get through a speech on the Conduct of US Foreign policy without mentioning either globalization or economic policy.

This sort of thing makes me realize that the Internet is getting more important all the time.

The questions after the speech were handed in to the Graduate Student Instructor, who plays Pinocchio to the kindly Gepetto of the course originator/coordinator, whose excuse for not allowing questions from the audience again was that "Berkeley People just want to make speeches."

Next session, the questions have to be emailed in BEFORE the lecture, and from registered students only! Think about that. MAYBE a couple will be entertained from the audience. This despite self-congratulatory speeches about looking for opinions from the "public".

Next time doesn't look too hot. UBerkeley disappoints. Mario Savio was right.