Torturing YooFor all the amazing stuff that emanates from the Bay Area, we have a few disgraceful elements here as well. Bechtel and the Hoover Institute spring to mind, but the worst of all is the fact that the chief architect of the Bush Administration's policy of sanctioning torture is UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo.
Tomorrow during graduation ceremonies for Boalt law school, protesters with Act Against Torture will converge to denounce Yoo and demand the school fire him. Details follow in the group's press release.
Berkeley – Anti-torture activists, torture survivors, students, lawyers, and others outraged over Bush administration torture policies will converge on the May 17 graduation ceremony of Boalt Hall, the law school of the University of California at Berkeley, to demand that John Yoo, professor at the law school and previously the chief architect of the Bush administration's pseudo-legal justifications for torturing and abuse of detainees at Guantánamo and elsewhere, be fired, disbarred, and prosecuted for war crimes.
The demonstration will begin at 8 a.m. when the gates of Berkeley's Hearst Greek Theatre, on Gayley Road at the east end of the UC campus, open for the ceremony. Demonstrators, many clad in Guantanámo-style orange style jumpsuits and black hoods, will distribute literature documenting Yoo's record and ask faculty and guests attending the ceremony to pin orange ribbons on their clothing as a symbol of opposition to the brutal policies he facilitated while working for the Bush administration. (Some graduating students are planning their own ribbon campaign.) After the ceremony demonstrators will reconvene at College Ave. and Bancroft Way, outside Boalt Hall, as the graduates, faculty, and guests arrive for a reception.
The demonstration was called by Act Against Torture, a group that has been working for three years to mobilize public opinion in the Bay Area against the U.S. government's policies of torture, indefinite detention, and extraordinary rendition in the "war on terror." CodePink, Global Exchange, World Can't Wait, and many members of the National Lawyers Guild are supporting the action.
The movement to hold Yoo accountable for his work while employed as deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel has taken off in recent weeks, since the declassification of an 81-page legal memo he wrote in 2003 claiming that the President and his agents are above any treaties or laws, including those that prohibit torture, assault, and maiming, in the interrogation of "enemy combatants." Among other developments:
• The National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights issued calls for Yoo's firing, disbarment, and prosecution for war crimes. The Guild's president, Marjorie Cohn, testified to that effect before the House Judiciary Committee.
• The New York Times, in an April 4 editorial declaring that the memo "makes it startlingly clear how deeply the Bush administration corrupted the law and the role of lawyers to give cover to existing and plainly illegal policies," observed that Yoo "inexplicably teaches law at the University of California, Berkeley" (emphasis added).
• Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer, popular blogger, and bestselling author, last month posted a column at Salon.com entitled "John Yoo's War Crimes," in which he asked "If writing memoranda authorizing torture - actions which then directly lead to the systematic commission of torture - doesn't make one a war criminal in the U.S., what does?"
• Scott Horton, lecturer at Columbia Law School, legal commentator for Harper's Magazine, and former chair of the Committee on International Law of the New York City Bar Association, wrote that "what [Yoo] did raises not merely ethics issues, but actual criminal culpability," and that "a solid basis exists ... under which John Yoo may be charged and brought to trial" under the same legal doctrines the U.S. used when it prosecuted and convicted officials of Hitler's Ministry of Justice at Nuremberg after World War II.
• Philippe Sands, a British attorney, has published an article in Vanity Fair and a book entitled "Torture Team" documenting in detail the role of Yoo, among other administration lawyers, in opening the door to torture at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere.
• Yoo's hometown paper, the Berkeley Daily Planet, published an editorial about him calling on the law school to "clean house," and the weekly East Bay Express this week published a lengthy cover story, entitled "The Torture Professor," laying out a detailed case for his dismissal.
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Comments (6)
How is this any different from right-wing groups which demand the firing of progressive professors because they disagree with their outlook? Yoo is a scuzball but the tenure system is designed to avoid public and political pressure on professors. I find it shameful The Guardian is advocating for interference in the tenure system at Boalt.
Posted by Shane | May 17, 2008 07:07 AM
You are absolutely correct, Shane. The core principles of academic freedom which have been incorporated into the personnel policies of most major universities for many decades protect Yoo from dismissal unless he is convicted of a crime "and which clearly demonstrates unfitness to continue as a member of the faculty." UC Academic Personnel Manual Sec. 15.
Personally, I believe, based on the work of Phillipe Sands, there does appear to be sufficient evidence to indict and convict Yoo for war crimes - along with dozens of others like him in the Bush administration - but until he is convicted he cannot be deprived of his tenure as a professor at U.C. Berkeley. Of course, I take the same position with respect to Ward Churchill, though I have even less respect for the academic work of Churchill than I do of Yoo.
For further information on academic freedom you and other SFBG readers can consult the website of the American Association of University Professors, a group formed by John Dewey and others in the early 20th century to protect academic freedom in the wake of the dismissal of Stanford professor Edward Ross, a prominent economist and sociologist who was a full professor and who had taught at Stanford for seven years. Ross had spoken out, quite controversially, against the use of migrant Chinese workers to build U.S. railroads. Another professor who spoke out in defense of Ross was also fired and several others quit the faculty in solidarity. Out of that series of events came the basic due process rights that attach to professors who receive tenure (and for those who are working towards that status). Tenure is a property right that cannot be removed without due process.
Stephen Diamond
Associate Professor of Law
Santa Clara University School of Law
Posted by Steve Diamond | May 17, 2008 10:07 PM
yoo wouldn't be fired for anything he said at uc as a professor. and he wouldn't be fired for anything he said publicly outside of being a professor. those comments are protected by the first amendment.
it's what he wrote as an adviser to the bush administration that makes his situation unique. his writings in those circumstances -- as a top official in the office of legal counsel -- make him not only vulnerable to discharge from academia because of potential ethical violations, but they could subject him to international prosecution as a war criminal if you accept that he distorted the legal interpretation of torture exclusively to benefit his client, the bush white house.
see, his writings at that time carried the force of law for reasons we won't explain in depth here. they just did.
none of us -- especially reporters -- are virgin to the idea that sometimes lawyers bend the truth to bolster their cause. but yoo has taken legal interpretation to the next level, and robert gammon at the east bay express made a simple but pursuasive case this week in support of the notion that yoo is primed for jail.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/the_torture_professor/Content?oid=727134
Posted by gwschulz | May 18, 2008 03:21 AM
As you note, his "potential" violations. That's fine as long as it is recognized that Yoo deserves the due process that he and the Bush Administration denies to prisoners of war at Guantanamo.
Posted by Steve Diamond | May 18, 2008 11:09 AM
of course he deserves due process. i'm not interested in trading one ethical lapse for another. i am, however, interested in getting past the notion that firing or even charging some of these people is too radical. blind justice has to mean that a top u.s. bureaucrat can end up in court as easily as a street robber, or our system isn't working.
Posted by g.w. schulz | May 18, 2008 12:04 PM
First, Shane, we didn't call for Yoo to be fired, we simply reported on a group that was exercising its right to demand it. I agree that criminal prosecution is probably the best route to deal with this. But I also think that Boalt officials can't simply ignore this, as they've done. Here is someone who actively worked to subvert deep and important legal principles upon which our country is based, and he did so with bad legal reasoning, and yet we trust him to educate a new generation of lawyers? Academic freedom doesn't protect such an individual from all scrutiny by his employers, who need to ensure that Boalt is meeting high legal and academic standards. Yoo might not deserve summary dismissal, but he doesn't deserve a free ride either.
Posted by Steven T. Jones | May 19, 2008 10:50 AM