At this year's graduation at the University of California at Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, about one-quarter of graduates wore red armbands. They were protesting Boalt law professor John Yoo's co-authorship of a memorandum written in 2002, when he served in the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
It's important to stress that under Yoo's approach, the class of those unprotected by the Geneva Conventions includes not only well-known leaders thought to have information about terrorist attacks, but also any person suspected of being an al Qaeda or Taliban member. Effectively, the logic of Yoo's memo strips all persons deemed to be possible terrorists of Geneva Convention protections (unless, as in Iraq, the president has specifically deemed the Conventions to apply).
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In sum, the Berkeley students who have protested Yoo's action in writing the memo should not simply be accused of being anti-academic freedom. They are arguing that through the act of giving counsel, Yoo acted immorally, perhaps even illegally.
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And from a moral point of view, students are right to protest them. They are right to do so if they find Yoo's Geneva Convention views specious. They are right to do so if they simply find torture immoral and wrong. And they are right to do so if they are concerned, as I am, with the especially horrific prospect Yoo's views open up: that entirely innocent persons may be, or have been, subject to torture and abuse.
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http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/08/hilden.torture/Yoo is a frightening little proto-fascist with a misleadingly pleasant demeanor, who has sometimes been a popular source for soundbites.
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