BERKELEY — Christopher Edley Jr.'s "single most important observation" in his first year as dean of UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law is this: "People in California are slightly crazy."
Edley isn't talking about the colorful characters on and around the Berkeley campus. What is crazy, he says, is the way California has scaled back spending on education.
From "leading the nation and the world with a model of a world-class education for everyone," the former Harvard law professor said, the state has settled for "something like 'better than Mississippi.' "
What concerns him most immediately is the condition of his law school, one of the brightest jewels in the UC crown, which is now facing serious problems.
Edley's plan to maintain Boalt Hall's status as one of the nation's top law schools is bold. It is also unusual for a liberal law professor who served in the Carter and Clinton administrations: He wants to privatize it.
Not completely, of course. Edley emphasizes that Boalt would retain the defining competitive advantages it has as a public law school: a commitment to public service, a diverse student body and ties to UC Berkeley's world-leading academic departments.
"Make no mistake, we will not privatize our mission, nor will we privatize the character of our student body," he said.
But in an era in which the school can no longer count on state funds to cover its needs, he wants Boalt to have greater control over its own management and finances. Edley wants to be free to make changes -- such as increasing the faculty size by roughly a third -- without having to obtain approval of Berkeley administrators.
"If the [state] is unwilling or unable to pay the bill, we need a strategy that does not depend on a miraculous turnaround," Edley said.
"At least we ought to eat what we kill," he added. This winter, Edley plans to announce a multiyear capital campaign to raise $100 million. It is a staggering sum for Boalt; the school's last capital campaign wrapped up in 1992 after raising $14 million.
Eventually he hopes to raise $300 million to build the endowment of the 950-student law school. Only then, and with a modest amount of continuing state support, he said, will Boalt have per-student funds to make it competitive with rivals like Yale, Stanford and New York University and have enough money for student financial aid.
