Shareholders of Bank of America may have stripped Ken Lewis of his title as chairman, but the man elected to assume oversight of one of the nation’s largest commercial banks is a past supporter who some believe is likely to side with Lewis on key decisions.

Former Bush Administration official John Yoo has temporarily traded his job on the law faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, for a teaching gig in more conservative Orange County, CA.

Barack Obama has chosen Christina D. Romer, currently a member of the Economics Department at the University of California, Berkeley, to be the head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

America’s fixation on celebrity has worked its way into academia.

While adding thousands of college records to the Muckety database recently, we couldn’t help but notice several star-studded boards.

One of the most blinding is at Vassar, where trustees include Meryl Streep and Lisa Kudrow, who are both alumnae and (despite Phoebe’s ditziness) brainiacs. The University of Southern California boasts Stephen Spielberg; Bennett College for Women has poet and Oprah pal Maya Angelou; and Gallaudet University has actress Marlee Matlin.

Erwin Chemerinsky was out. Now he’s back in.

The high-profile legal scholar and Duke University professor has been “re-hired” to become the founding dean of the Donald Bren School of Law at the University of California, Irvine, officials announced.

Chemerinsky’s original hiring at U.C. Irvine caused a national stir among conservatives and several prominent Californians who complained about his liberal views. Chemerinsky, for one, was instrumental in helping tear down a prominent California ballot initiative, Proposition 209, which would have repealed affirmative action programs in the state.