Friday, February 13, 2009
University of California, Berkeley, Professor John Yoo, who crafted the Bush administration’s legal justification of torture, is on leave from his tenured post at UC Berkeley to teach foreign relations law as a visiting professor at Chapman University School of Law in largely conservative Orange County, where he is expected to be subject to fewer protests.
Yoo, a former Justice Department attorney, became notorious for crafting a number of important memos that narrowly defined torture and argued that the Bush administration’s controversial interrogation tactics did not violate the Geneva Conventions. The memos justified harsh treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere, such as the controversial waterboarding technique.
As a conservative voice in the liberal Berkeley community, Yoo was subject to considerable criticism. City leaders in Berkeley branded him as a war criminal and sent a letter to the U.S. attorney general supporting prosecution of Yoo and other Bush administration officials for war crimes, and urged UC Berkeley to fire him if he was convicted of human rights violations.
“I certainly don't get upset about being criticized,” said Yoo, sitting in his new campus office. “I would feel I wasn’t doing my job as an academic if I wasn’t writing or saying things that other people disagreed with.”
Bush Policymaker Escapes Berkeley’s Wrath (by Susannah Rosenblatt, Los Angeles Times)
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