Protesters Want UC Berkeley Law Professor Fired

BERKELEY, Calif. — Anti-war activists protested Monday at the University of California, Berkeley to call for the firing of a law professor who co-wrote legal memos that critics say were used to justify the torture of suspected terrorists.

Campus police arrested at least four people who refused to leave the university's law school building.

The demonstrators said John Yoo should be dismissed, disbarred and prosecuted for war crimes for his work as a Bush administration attorney from 2001 to 2003, when he helped craft legal theories for waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques.

Shouting "war criminal," the protesters confronted Yoo as he entered a lecture hall on the first day of class at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, where the tenured professor is teaching a civil law course this semester.

Yoo mostly ignored the demonstrators and waited for police to remove them from the classroom before he began teaching. Several officers then stood outside the lecture hall to prevent protesters and journalists from entering.

Demonstrators also staged a mock arrest of Yoo. Some dressed in black hoods and orange prisoner suits similar to ones seen in infamous photos of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which was closed in 2006 following reports of detainee abuse.

"There is little doubt that John Yoo is a war criminal," said civil rights attorney Dan Siegel, speaking outside Boalt Hall. "John Yoo went to Washington and created the ideological, political and legal basis for the torture of innocent people."

Yoo, who returned to UC Berkeley after spending the spring semester at Chapman University School of Law in Orange County, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

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Yoo, 42, has defended the controversial interrogation techniques, saying they were needed to protect the country from terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"To limit the president's constitutional power to protect the nation from foreign threats is simply foolhardy," Yoo wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece last month.

He has come under intense criticism since the interrogation memos became public in 2004. The Berkeley City Council has passed a measure calling for the federal government to prosecute him for war crimes, and convicted terrorist Jose Padilla has filed a lawsuit alleging that Yoo's legal opinions led to his alleged torture.

Christopher Edley Jr., Berkeley's law school dean, has rejected calls to dismiss Yoo, saying the university doesn't have the resources to investigate his Justice Department work, which involved classified intelligence.

Berkeley law students are divided over Yoo, whose classes are among the law school's most popular.

Liz Jackson, a second-year law student, said the university should determine if he violated UC's faculty code of conduct. "I personally believe he has blood on his hands," said Jackson, 30.

But Nathan Salha, 24, who took one of Yoo's classes last year and is enrolled in his course this semester, said he's a good teacher. "I don't think it's the university's place to fire him for political opinions," he said.

Comments

[mdemploi]

No money to alumni fund this year.
Boalt Hall was stupid to bring him back on.
Fire him for his intellectual dishonesty. There are better candidates elsewhere.

[scat]

Yes fire him! because we disagree with him.

And these students are the future of America?

[lamplighter55]

I completely disagree with John Yoo's reading of the President's constitutional powers. It basically gives the President the right to do anything he (or she) wants as long as he calls whatever he's doing a war.

Having said that, to insist that someone is fired from teaching because you disagree with them is the opposite of learning. It is anti-academic.

[maggiee]

I agree that someone shouldn't be fired for political reasons but he wrote legal memos that had little or no basis in law. Either he was criminal in trying to give law-breaking cover or he was incompetent as a lawyer. If you give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was incompetent then he has no business teaching law. If he was a math professor who wrote extensively that 2+2=7 and an entire branch of government, let's say NASA, had based its operations on his premise that 2+2=7 and had a series of massive failures because of it, I would hardly expect M.I.T. to hire him either.

[FdaLef]

John Yoo is a Patriot. Thank you Mr. Yoo for helping keep my family, and the fools on this site, safe from further terrorist attacks.

[loonwalk]

".. needed to protect the country..." Words reflecting a mis-concieved position of weakness unbefitting his prior office or the people of this nation. Disgraceful.

[LORISNJ]

How can Yoo teach something he clearly knows little about.

[1differentdrummer]

What kind of "university" hires a man like that to "teach?"

[becky16]

Aaah...i miss varsity.

[thegrifter]

Berkley of all places.. sheesh!

[igorz]

Berkeley

[serena1313]

It is becoming apparent that for Bush administration officials there is no consequence or price to be paid for abusing power.

There is something untoward when prestigious higher institutions of learning reward professorships to people whose reputations are in tatters and their character less than stellar. Despite students, professors (including the clergy at SMU) and local citizens protests and letters of opposition: Yoo is a tenured professor at Berkeley, Gonzales will teach at Texas Tech this fall and Southern Methodist University granted Bush a prime location to build his Library.

The implications cannot be overstated. To call this anything less than an abomination would not do it justice.

[SSF]

Don't fire him, let him keep shooting his mouth off. You know......­....."anyt­hing you say can and will be used against you". Every time Mr. Yoo speaks, it's evidence and there are no statutes of limitations on war crimes and crimes against humanity!

[TopProf]

Why was he hired? Learn what the modern universities are all about. Owned by corporate interests and people rich enough to buy naming rights. Run by state republicans. Those people are not liberals, by the way.

[chicagurl]

John Yoo can be protected and students removed, but someone can bring a gun into a town hall where President Obama is going to speak. Seems out of whack to me..............

[naeldwyck]

I'm with you on the sentiment, but I think it would be good to keep to the facts, and I don't think anyone is aware a gun was brought INSIDE any town hall where the president spoke.

[EuroRant1]

"INSIDE or OUTSIDE" ... you are playing with semantics here. It's not like your country does not have a long history of gun assassinations and gun assassination attempts.

(Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, James A Garfield, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, John F Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter & Ronald Reagan)

"When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat." -- George Carlin

[applespider]

Funny thing about guns, though...they're designed to send rounds long distances...that's the point of using one.

I don't buy the apologist excuses for these gun-toting lunatics...it doesn't matter that these sociopaths were down the street or across the yard...guns kill from a distance.

[scat]

Funny thing about the gun toter. it was radio stunt.

[naeldwyck]

The NH one wasn't.

[outragedkar]

How did he get tenure this quickly? Who was bought to get that honor rammed through the Board of Regents that fast? Anybody got the story about that? After all, the big issue is it's California taxpayers paying for this position.
Out of curiosity, does he teach a required class for law students? If he is, that's even more tragic.

[Gover]

He was a prof there before.

[bbbbmer]

It's about TIME people protested John Yoo's continued employment at Boalt. Who on EARTH hired him in the first place????? THEY should be fired as well!!!!!