In this morning’s LA Times:Bush policymaker escapes Berkeley's wrath
In Berkeley, city leaders branded him a war criminal and human rights activists put up a billboard to denounce him. But in suburban Orange County, Professor John Yoo—the primary architect of the Bush administration's policy on harsh interrogation techniques that many consider torture—has found relatively calmer waters.
Yoo is a visiting professor at Chapman University School of Law in Orange, on leave from his tenured post at UC Berkeley to teach foreign relations law.
Although a handful of protesters, one in a Statue of Liberty get-up and another in an orange Abu Ghraib jumpsuit and hood, demonstrated against Yoo on campus recently, law students said they appreciate the prestige and exposure he could bring the law school.
But a small group of local activists said they hope to stir up anger at the 14-year-old law school in the thick of conservative Orange County.
"Our aim is to get the man fired -- he has no business being in our community," said Pat Alviso, 56, of Huntington Beach, who heads the Orange County chapter of Military Families Speak Out. Her son is a Marine serving in Afghanistan who completed two tours in Iraq.
Chapman law school alumnus Michael Penn agrees: "I think it's a black eye to the school. . . . To me, he's a war criminal."
Yoo, a former Justice Department attorney, achieved notoriety by crafting memos -- later withdrawn by the department -- that narrowly defined torture and argued that Bush's authorization of controversial interrogation tactics against Al Qaeda did not violate the Geneva Conventions. The memos justified harsh treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, including the controversial waterboarding technique.
…
"I think it's interesting to have him there," said Billy Essayli, a second-year law student who heads the campus California Republican Lawyers Assn. Still, Essayli conceded that he was surprised there wasn't a greater public outcry at Yoo's arrival in January.
…
For his part, Yoo has stayed true to form since arriving at Chapman: Last month, he wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal criticizing President Obama, saying he had opened the door to future terrorist acts in the U.S....
4 comments:
We oughta organize a protest. This guy is slime.
It's so sad to see what Chapman U. has become, and I know excellent faculty there who find it appalling: de-emphasis on the liberal arts, emphasis on money--that is, business--and so on. It's all the stranger that (at least when I taught there as an adjunct) there was a campuswide focus on Albert Schweitzer. The "reverence for life" ethic doesn't seem to have quite taken hold there.
I suppose it'd be "interesting" to have Mengele or Eichmann as a guest lecturer, too, if we could raise them from the dead.
I swear I've seen this guy around IVC. Dosen't he work at IVC?
Trust me, if Yoo had been on campus, he would have been met by a star-spangled parade and a slew of speeches by numerous corrupt and unsavory politicians, all arranged by Tom Fuentes and his stooges.
Post a Comment