I've said it before, I'll say it again: Fuck Yoo!

This should be the first of many instances where John Yoo can not go on with this life after being Dubya, Cheney, & Co.'s legal department equivalent of Adolph Eichmann, a bureaucrat that made bad things happen.

Dumb argument, dean. Yoo's ACTIONS as a government official aren't relevant to "academic freedom". The policies of torture Yoo largely created are not "academic".

Actually, I'd have to agree with the dean. Yoo deserves that which he would so glibly deny others, a fair trial. I have little doubt that when such a trial is held he'll be found guilty of war crimes and breaking the laws regarding torture. But until that trial is held, he has tenure. Of course that does bring to mind another tenured professor who did get sacked for speaking his mind. When will the Dean of Law at Berkely argue that Ward Churchill should get his job back, with pay. Oh, I guess 'academic freedom' has gone the way of 'free and fair elections' and 'freedom of speach'. Nevermind, my bad.

Would that be the same "academic freedom" endorsed by Daniel Pipes, Allan Dershowitz and David Horowitz, among others, and their Campus Watch organization to deny tenure to all critics of Israel/Zionism.

I find it fascinating that Ward Churchill was released from tenure for voicing his political views-and yet Berkeley is so insistent on pretecting John Yoo. I would guess that what is designated on ones' voter registration card is all that matters.

If the Dean cannot see the serious and gross violations of our laws, the constitution and basic human rights violated by John Yoo, then maybe the Dean should go as well. John Yoo does not need his day in court to be dismissed from Berkeley. His writings are the foundation for his dismissal. I once looked at UC Berkeley as an outstanding center for education but over the years the more I've learned the less attractive this place becomes. It is lavish with high salaries and perks for administrators while it raises tuition and fights increases for the lower paid. Don't forget its involvement in weapons development (including the atomic bombs) and its experimentation on animals. Maybe John Yoo fits Berkeley very well. Maybe it can become a center for the promulgation of torture as well.

Indict and try...he can't teach from prison.

I know I've already posted here-but a huge "thank you" to the protestors. Don't "let-up" on Yoo. Keep the pressure on him, and on Berkeley to fire him.
People died in agony because of that "republican tool." He's a disgrace to God and country. And he needs to know it!

Teachers do not have to be found guilty of a crime to be dismissed from their position. Many have been let go for private sexual indiscretions, for making racial, or religious comments that were inappropriate, or simply for acting in ways that do not hold to the standards of the school. Academic freedom, does not allow a person to profess things which are against the law. The Yoo memos are there for anyone to read. Surly advocating torture is against the law, and below the standards of any University. Through the bum out.

Many thanks to the protestors, keep it up.
This man has maimed and forever ruined peoples lives. I am unclear as to how many have died because of him. I am ashamed of the University of California and the position they have taken on this issue. I could not imagine taking a course in Constitutional Law from him I hope some others are offering the content so his classes could/should be boycotted

Fire.
Disbar.
Prosecute.

For what it's worth Christopher Edley, Jr. is a senior campaign advisor in law for Obama.

What this means I not sure for I will never believe in Guilt by Association.

Since John Yoo was merely on leave from his tenured position then he deserves to retain that position and I support his academic freedom.

However he has shown egregious misconduct and in the absence of the Federal government (namely Congress) dealing with the torture issue and contempt for the rule of law I think he should be charged. It seems there would be two avenues. I imagine the California bar can bring forward a motion for disbarment and failing that U Berkeley can charge him with conduct unbecoming a professor and he would have what would amount to a trial by the University's Senate.

Just what is it that makes a smug asshole smug? John Yoo has grabbed onto a technofascist ideology and a set of rich and powerful friends who reinforce it. So with the help of his fellow ideologues he's able to filter out all kinds of human potentialities—compassion, wisdom, love, you name it. It's a bitch feeling you have to serve as a tool of the kleptocracy. You have to be a vile creature and look in the mirror every morning.

formernadervoter: Perhaps, but I'd reverse the order.

Prosecute.
Disbar.

Then it's up to the law school whether he still meets the qualifications for teaching there.

My father was fired from a university teaching position in 1953, during the McCarthy purges. We do not want to go back to firing people for their political beliefs. No way.

But public pressure, vigorous questioning in Congressional committees, and prosecution (if there's a basis for it; I don't know the international law well enough to know whether merely advocating something is a criminal offense) -- absolutely.

John Yoo is a legal fictionalist. What he wrote defies both the spirit and the content of the Geneva Conventions. He did not believe what he wrote. Neither did Bush. But they engaged in this charade to buy time so that while they were pretending they believed it, they tortured people, and then "when they realized they didn't believe it, they stopped".

But in fact, they never believed it and they still have not stopped torturing people, and the US started torturing prisoners a long time ago, way before Gulf II, tortured and disappeared hundreds of thousands of people throughout South America in the 80's and 90's, so that's not even the question.

The horror of Yoo is to introduce a grotesque notion like that it might be proper to torture "enemies" who are merely identified by the "President" (W. Bush was never elected by the people and is not the president...) (so let's call him and people of his ilk the Executing Branch,) so Yoo says whomever the media claims to be the Executive Branch, the EXECUTING BRANCH, perhaps, can label whomever they please as being worthy of torture and then torture them.

That's really what Pee-Yoo and UC(K!) Berkeley and W the Woose-Bush and Chain-ey are fighting for the right to do: to let their goons, from the Executing Branch to the Executing Root, from the Corporate DC Headwaters to the Blackwaters Anywhere-else, label and torture.

But because of this sort of half baked legal fictionalist propaganda-as-presidential-advice plague,
this current media/KKKapitol sickness, this simulacrum virus, Congress is currently re-debating whether the Clean Water Act really refers to "all" water, and other minutiae. Through these sort of phony misinterpretations, false "Gee but I'm just an innocent confused Plutocrat" presentations, these Rovian idiots plan to force Congress into re-proving the very axioms of democracy, so that while these un-necessary "necessary clarifications" occur (and tie up the halls of justice so they are too busy to prosecute the war criminals and energy monopolies and other corporate slime who really plague us,) the corporations can buy time while they plunder.

That's what this is all about. And either we Human Beings of Earth, We the People, stand up TOGETHER and say two plus two is four and humanity is one, or we listen to the Orwellian goons and believe two plus two might equal five until they re-assure us that (MAYBE) it doesn't...

If we should torture our enemies, however, then let us certainly torture John Yoo, because JOHN YOO IS AN ENEMY OF HUMAN RIGHTS, DEMOCRACY, HUMAN DECENCY AND JUSTICE AND THAT IS CLEAR. HE HAS PROVEN THAT!

As for the thousands of men women and children held in secret and not-so-secret prisons the world over by the Corporations who refuse to represent the US people or the US law but still call themselves the US ARMY/Pentagon, as for those people, whom the Pentagon likes to call enemies, they are not enemies until they have had trials in US Courts of Justice and even then it would be wrong to torture them because torture is illegal and immoral when you do it to any animal or human being.

And also, no one can be labelled as complex a thing as an enemy merely because some idiot named Woose Bush called him one, or a spoiled brat nerd named Rove, or a malcontent beastial freak like Cheney, or a damned whore like Rice, or a fag brat like Rumsfeld or a four time loser like Hitler!

Christ said we should love our enemies! Did Yoo ever read that?

So give them trials or free these so-called enemies.
But as soon as anyone can actually prove that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Bloomberg and Yoo are NOT human, then, well, even then we can't torture them until God says so. But sometimes I wish we could!

If you fire a guy like Yoo, bottom line, that is the least you could do, a bare beginning, and if UC Berkeley is not ready to do so, I don't want any of my tax dollars going to those legal fictionalists! They are a danger to my democracy, my planet and decency itself!

The height of irony: John Yoo, one of the great criminals of our time, is a tenured professor of LAW(!) at what I used to think was one of our great universities. What can we expect from his students?

At least some of the law students took part in a protest. It shows that some Americans are prepared to translate their gripes into action. Good on them for so doing!

Now what about the other 300 million Yanks getting off their asses?

P.S. Relocating Israel? Check my blog!

Hmmm, I'm not so sure that I can agree with Dean Edley's opinion (and those of some of the commentors here) that Yoo's problem is one of 'freedom of speech' or 'academic freedom'.

Assume that another law professor, while on leave from UC Berkeley, were to advise an accused (not convicted) Mafia don on how to circumvent the law? Would that be covered by 'freedom of speech' and 'academic freedom' arguments?

Additionally, though one certainly retains their 'right to free speech' while away from the ivory towers, they are not immune to illegal, unconstitutional and morally repugnant actions. Yoo has every right to have his own personal opinions; the memoranda that Yoo issued led to blatantly illegal, unconstitutional and morally repugnant actions by the government under color of law. It should be remembered, at the Nuremberg trials, lawyers were tried for abusing the legal system to allow the Nazis to perpetuate their monstrous programs.

Additionally, Yoo is teaching Constitutional Law! The very man who so deftly tortured the plain meaning of the Constitution's prohibition of 'cruel and unusual punishment' is teaching Constitutional Law? What must he be teaching his students?

Yoo is entitled to due process of law, of course. But that is not Dean Edley's position; he argues that Yoo is permitted to advocate felonious conduct and gross violations of human rights in the name of the First Amendment. Putnik is right. This Vyshinsky, this Himmler, must be suspended, investigated, indicted, tried, disbarred, convicted and sentenced. He is entitled to the legal presumption of innocence, but res ipsa loquitur. The prima facie case against him is overwhelming.

Stop trying to correct the system one wrong at a time. The system is corrupt and uncorrectable. The system must be replaced.

This administration of our government is not the problem. The government system is the problem. The US Constitution is not working anymore. It is ruined, worn out.

This system must be replaced.

The first step is to recognize that the system is broken and cannot be fixed.

I'm all for Academic Freedom, so I think they shouldn't fire him until he's convicted as a war criminal. I just hate to think what will happen if his students turn in an assignment late.

Congratulations to Anne Weills for standing up for truth and justice.

http://www.bccmeteorites.com/misconduct-planetary.html
SRD

"I am personally willing to crush children's testicles in front of the children's parents". - John Yoo

This is not stated my inside policymaker at the highest level of government.

What First Amendment Right is that? Is that freedom of speech? Or incitement to commit war crimes!?

And forget about "academic freedom" that was concisely exposed as an arbitrary farce by Arvy May 18th, 2008 2:27 pm. I would like congressional hearings on that, the case of Prof Norman G. Finklestein, Ward Churchill; in-fact an open hearing, testimonial filibustering, carried on C-SPAN.

First Amendment I fight for, and definded with my fist where necessary, gone to jail unnecessarily, in fact unconstitutionally, for I was opposing or stopping one, as is our responsibility legally, otherwise we are an accessory, are we not?

So, the 50 Free Speech Activist, was confronting High Treason and War Crimes, while others wanted to comfortably be accessories after the fact.

For evidence to the charade on campus USA in upholding Freedom of Speech and the Press. And it is past time to be contained as 'peaceably assembled' and there is no constitutional government to petition, but each other. Let the student body decide in campus referendums on who is hired and fired period.

And put the question to all of us in a national referendum on withdrawal of all troops from counties, unless requested by the direct popular vote of the country. That could close all of the bases!

There are 18,000,000 college students in the US.

Students are voters, and facing the return to the compulsory military draft is they younger than 42. Women too, yes, with a change of 'he' to 'person', you are all drafted when H.R. 393is enacted.

Academic McCarthyism Threatens Democracy

Professor Norman G. Finkelstein, son of Holocaust survivors and the most prominent critic of Israeli policy in American academia, was denied tenure by DePaul University, even though the political science department and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences recommended tenure.

Harvard law school professor Alan Dershowitz lobbied against tenure for Finkelstein, an act described by MIT professor Noam Chomsky as a "jihad" designed "simply to try to vilify and defame him, in the hope that maybe what he's writing will disappear." Finkelstein told the Democracy Now! program: "I met the standards of tenure DePaul required, but it wasn't enough to overcome the political opposition to my speaking out on the Israel-Palestine conflict." The late Raul Hilberg, dean of Holocaust historians and a Finkelstein supporter, had said: "I have a sinking feeling about the damage this will do to academic freedom."

Professor Ward Churchill was fired by the University of Colorado at Boulder, ostensibly because of research misconduct, a pretext, many believe, for his unpopular views. Churchill has written extensively on the genocide of Native Americans and the federal government's COINTELPRO program. The trouble started when Churchill characterized the 9-11 attacks as a response to years of U.S. abuses, and called the victims of 9-11 "little Eichmanns" who formed a "technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire."

Then there is Erwin Chemerinsky, constitutional scholar extraordinaire who has argued for judicial review for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and represented Valerie Plame, the CIA agent outed by the Bush administration. He was chosen to become dean of the new University of California-Irvine law school. Then, the chancellor of Irvine rescinded the contract —- allegedly due to pressure from conservative groups -— then reinstated Chemerinsky.

Meanwhile, Andrew Meyer, a student at the University of Florida, was tasered by police during a speech by Sen. John Kerry, while he asked questions that were critical of Bush. And there are calls by the College Republicans for the resignation of David McSwane, the editor-in-chief of the Rocky Mountain Collegian, Colorado State University's student newspaper, who wrote an editorial in which he said "Taser this. F*** Bush."...'

And if anyone thinks the latest revelation of Donald Rumsfeld was just a poor taste in his exercise of Constitutional Protected - First Amendment Right of Freedom of Speech. I would be interested as to why? I view it an incitement for state sponsored terrorism, constituting High Treason for furtherance and instigation of wars of aggression, is flagrant violation of the Nuremberg Principles and US Law and Constitution.

Rumsfeld: "Why Not another 911"

Rumsfeld declared that the American people lack "the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the 'threats'" -- and need another 9/11.

"What's to be done? The correction for that, I suppose, is another attack."

As openly advocated by wide swaths of elites, from the People for the New American Century (PNAC), of which Rumsfeld has been a member, to the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski (in his The Grand Chessboard), only an attack "on the order of Pearl Harbor" would, in Brzezinski's words, cause the American people to support an "imperial mobilization," and a world war.

It is not for nothing that Donald Rumsfeld was described by legendary war criminal Henry Kissinger as "the most ruthless man I've ever known."

Yoo is the tip of the ice burg when it comes to torture in the USA.

The major media networks practice there on form of torture, its called non-truthful reporting.

What about Mike Huckabee, and the crack he made yesterday about Obama falling out of a chair because of Gun fire.
He said that is was a bad joke, and apologized.

Why would a 50 year old Christian Minister who earlier this year was running for the presidential nomination have said such a horrible thing?
Torture, thanks Mike for remeinding me what can happen to good men who try through good polotics and ministry to help the American people.
Oh yea , and if their agenda is not lock step wih the powers that be, the good old boy netowrk, watch your back for real.

Hey Mike , your true colors are known and everyone sees you for exactly what you are, join Mcains tickect, Obama will have the last laugh.

Oh , and any netwotk that gives Mike Huckabee the time of day in a political round table of disscussion on any subject deserves no viewers.
Why torture more people with his backwoods deliverence jokes.

That shows that some freedoms are more free than others. Ward Churchill was fired form his tenured position because of his political opinion.

Oh what a fine free country...

No, the Dean is right. Yoo should not be fired. Yet.

What should happen is the beginning of a move to disbar him.

Should that be successful--and, of course, it ought to be if legal ethics amount to ANYTHING--there would THEN be grounds to fire him.

The two things that can get a tenured professor fired are failure to perform his or her duties and moral turpitude. A disbarred law professor falls under the moral turpitude clause.

Remember that Yoo is "with us" and Ward Churchill was
one of the "or you're not" group. In today's USA, where you can be arrested for the wrong T-Shirt or bumper sticker, that makes all the difference. We still have free speach here but some are more free than others.

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."—President-elect George W. Bush, CNN.com, December 18, 2000.

John Yoo aided and abetted his client's breaking of the law. Any other attorney in that position would be disbarred and prosecuted immediately. To have this man continue to teach law under the banner of "academic freedom" is ludicrous.

Keep hounding his ass, these guys should have no rest, no reprieve. If he is so fond of torture maybe he can experience a tortured conscience.

The mind of a person who would think someone as evil as Yoo should continue service, that torture and murder of innocent or guilty people is a valid point of academic discussion are just as evil themselves.

Do remember this is the same university that has allowed its facilities for years to be used to hideously torture and murder cats and monkeys.

The United States of America is no more.
The Rule of law is a sham.
The fact that most lawyers are quiet on this matter, cowardly collecting their paychecks, their souls withered away, is proof of this. How sad that this once venerated profession has sold out. How warped a country we live in where our thinking class has so corrupted rational thought. The law has become a tool used by and taught by hypocritical fools. All lawyers should be ashamed at the state we're in and the depths to which we have descended.

Personally I think Ward Churchill is a horse's ass. Was the cleaning lady on the 87th floor of the WTC a "little Eichmann"? Was the dishwasher at Windows on the World? However, Churchill never advocated breaking the law and doing bodily harm to others. Yoo is in a category by himself and you can bet the ranch that Bush is going to pardon this scholar-criminal before he leaves office.

Perhaps Boalt Hall should, with the University's approval, organize a special court exercise to try Yoo on appropriate charges, and rescind his tenure if he is convicted. I would not want anyone in my family to take courses from Yoo; his views on torture represent an appalling lack of moral awareness. I respect and support academic freedom, but somehow Yoo must be prosecuted for his advocacy (then and subsequently) of torture as a legal means of interrogation. If politicians are too timid, then the University should act.

The Furman University faculty and staff are taking the heat for being bold enough to object to Bush's commencement speech there on May 3lst.

Bush and his corrupt administration far surpass the Yoo contribution to his misguided leadership.

The seniors there will hear his usual propaganda and will probably be so honored to have such a paragon of virtue and wisdom addressing them. Little do they know they might be in uniform next year. (Unless daddy finds a way of keeping them home from the next made-up-facts war.)

IT IS A POLICY ISSUE - NOT PERSONALITY!

The dialog is serious and interesting, but find the word policy used once by Carolyn Jones in the article.

And only by me among the 36 posted comments above. Which indicates a focus on the Prof Yoo, and not a policy that would have been perpetrated regardless of who was sucked in to do the dirty paper work. And by extension that applies to all of them; Bush, Chaney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice, and sick generals.

So, to get to the root of policy-making, who commissioned the master policy-makers? Who actually gives "the green light" and what is their goals?

John Yoo is a monster, proven in his arrogance and depravity to proclaim they had legal authority to "crush a child's testicals" to coerce a bogus confession for their sadistic and disinformational purposes.

Is it not for us, to be more analytical, to get to the root of the problem, that is radical?

'...Yoo's torture memo was later rescinded by the Department of Justice and, in 2004 and 2006, in two lawsuits challenging the legality of the torture policy, the U.S. Supreme Court voided many of Yoo's arguments...'

Although I never had the chance to read the memo, I would say don't shoot the messenger but again he has to bear some responsibility in what was created from those memos he wrote. Also, we have seen teacher loosing their job because of they wanted to modify they pledge to allegiance, wow what a nonsense. Would you crush children testicule in exchange for information that would save lives? I think there is other way to get information, don't you think?

@purvis ames

Just a minor correction. Contrary to much of the for profit media palaver, Ward Churchill *did not* suggest that everyone killed in the Twin Towers collapse were "little Eichmanns". In his own words:

"Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as "Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns." Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies"

You may still consider him an ass for this statement; however, if you are to vilify someone, get their words right.

Get it. Ward Churchill. John Yoo. One get's barbecued and deep fried. The other gets laurels and is feted. Who did Churchill torture? This is America until it dies. Always has been. We started slicing on humans for fun and war here back in 1609. We will be doing it the day this country collapses into charred smoking rubble. And every body will run around saying, "How did this happen?"

He thinks people object to him because he's conservative?! He thinks that torture and assassination are legal tools to conserve something. What is it that he is conserving? His grip on our short hairs!

The real basis of the so-called "academic freedom" argument espoused by Boalt Hall officials is that they get so much money from corporations, US supporters of Zionism and rich people in general. As the US Supreme Court says: "Money is speech."

In this case, big money is shouting: "Protect the torturer John Yoo and his bosses! Piss on human rights, the Constitution and international law!

There is yet another rabbit hole entrance to Wonderland in the basement of the UC School of Law and you can even learn how to justify torture on the way down.

That's all, folks.

I wrote the following letter (my second) to Dean Edley:
_______________________________________________________

Thank you for responding to my request that you fire John Yoo.

The concept of "academic freedom" is not new to me, and I wholly support its protection; however, it does not extend to situations where a professor becomes an accessory to a crime before the fact.

I assume you have read the relevant memos in which Yoo specifically twisted legal definitions to allow senior officials to break domestic and international law. That he did not physically commit the actual crime is irrelevant. What he did was tantamount to a commanding officer telling his soldiers to shoot, and he is just as guilty. Were he an average, middle-class person, he would have been arrested and tried for promoting illegal acts.

Your rationalization may allow you to keep Mr. Yoo on your staff, but it disrespects the law, and you are supporting the continuing torture of "detainees". Berkeley's name is far too valuable, and you are better than that. I think you know that in your heart.

_______________________________

His email address is: edley AT law.berkeley.edu

Maybe, just maybe we could bury him in emails and letters. Berkeley was such a place of tolerance and hope when we attended. :-(

thanks babzster!

Mr. Yoo calls himself a conservative. What does he mean by that? Was Edmund Burke a conservative? Is he that kind of conservative? Or is he a Benito Mussolini type conservative? Actually Mussolini called himself a reactionary.So is Yoo a reactionary? Reactionaries certainly should have the right to free speech.

Mr. Yoo should not be fired for speaking his mind. But he should be executed for justifying the torture and murder of people on the same grounds as a commanding officer would be guilty of murder for ordering an unjust murder.