Professor takes heat at UCI

Andrew Edwards

Professor John Choon Yoo was outnumbered.

Yoo, a law professor at UC Berkeley and former Justice Department

official, was invited to UC Irvine to speak Monday on the role of law

in counterterrorism policy, but more than 400 people signed a

petition asking that the invitation be canceled.

The controversy over Yoo’s appearance at the school stemmed from

his role in drafting an August 2002 memo that interpreted a 1994

federal anti-torture law. The document defined physical torture as

acts that cause pain comparable to serious injury, such as organ

failure or death.

Critics of the Bush administration have charged that legal

theories outlined in that and other memos paved the way for alleged

abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Camp X-Ray in

Guantanamo Bay.

Yoo’s position is that Al Qaeda terrorists are not subject to the

full protections of the Geneva Convention.

“The Geneva Convention [is] a treaty between nation states ... Al

Qaeda is not a nation state,” he said.

The petition against Yoo’s visit, part of the campus’ Chancellor’s

Distinguished Fellows Series of lectures, was written by UC Irvine

history professor Mark Le Vine, who said Yoo’s controversial

background seemed inappropriate for the series.

“[He’s] not distinguished in the sense that I understand

distinguished,” Le Vine said.

The petition asked that Yoo take part in a debate instead of

merely giving a lecture, and though his speech was not canceled, Yoo

agreed to face off against Le Vine and two other critics Monday,

hours before his lecture. No one who supported his views was on the

panel.

“As long as I get a fair opportunity to express my views, I don’t

care how many people there are,” Yoo said.

For more than 90 minutes during Monday’s panel discussion, Yoo

quietly jotted down notes while Le Vine, history professor Cecilia

Lynch and attorney Stephen Rohde, who sits on the ACLU’s California

board of directors, accused him of excusing torture and neglecting

his academic responsibilities.

“War crimes make no exceptions for lawyers,” Rohde blasted. “You

too, professor Yoo, may be indicted as a war criminal.”

Rohde made that statement while alleging Yoo’s writings could be

considered part of a conspiracy to abuse prisoners. Lynch charged Yoo

with ignoring his duty to consider other interpretations of the law.

“For lawyers, it is their responsibility to give all sides of an

argument,” she said.

During his turn to speak, Yoo was sporadically heckled by a mostly

hostile audience. He declined to make specific comments regarding

what kinds of interrogation techniques constitute torture and said

his memo was not an endorsement of a policy allowing activities short

of torture but was only an interpretation of law.

He did say interrogations were “the only way to stop 9/11-style

attacks,” because intelligence officials have to rely on information

gleaned from terrorists to assess threats.

Yoo is not the only speaker associated with U.S. military policy

to be a part of this year’s lecture series. Patriot Act architect

Viet Dinh spoke in January. Visits are scheduled for Hans Blix,

former chief United Nations weapons inspector, and former Spanish

Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, one of the few world leaders who

supported the invasion of Iraq.