ACADEMIC POSITIONS OF TORTURE

Why is John Yoo still on the UC Berkeley faculty?

Join World Can't Wait and others on campus this Monday, August 16 to protest University accommodation for war crimes. A noon press conference will feature prominent speakers including UC alumni representing several generations of UC Law graduates. A public Procession Against Torture and UC Complicity will immediately follow.

Despite all that is now known about the horrors of the torture system Yoo and other lawyers rigged up for Bush and Cheney - no one at the top layers of the UC power structure has yet taken any responsibility for challenging Yoo's status as a tenured professor. Protest now, to add your voice to the demand that this war criminal has to be gotten out of that classroom!

Does UC hope somehow John Yoo would become old news, that protests and criticism would go away? NEW factual evidence, and legal arguments too, only continue showing more about Yoo's role in enabling and enacting torture. In recent congressional testimony, Yoo's former boss Jay Bybee fingered Yoo for the legal work Yoo gave Bush and Cheney as requested, to "legalize" and support the torture. Several current major legal cases have Yoo in jeopardy of lawsuits and prosecution. Yet still, Yoo continues profiting from his UC faculty status, gaining celebrity on a lucrative book tour while he teaches (and acts as role model for) the new generation of lawyers and judges.

A lawyer whose work product and advice enabled the White House, the CIA and the U.S. military to commit torture and other war crimes is not protected by "freedom of speech." A university which lets a war criminal teach constitutional law and ethics to its students is not protecting "academic freedom" - it is protecting war crimes.

An Obama administration that refuses to fully repudiate - and prosecute - war crimes is not the "change" anyone hoped for. World Can't Wait is determined to move forward building the kind of resistance movement needed, rather than rely on or place our hopes in the hands of leaders who counsel us to "seek common ground" with fascists and torturers.

Join us this Monday at the Berkeley Law campus as we gather with many other organizations (see sidebar) to say NO to torture and to be part of that resistance.