On Aug. 19, the first day of class at the University of California, Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, students, activists, lawyers and community members gathered to call for Professor John Yoo’s dismissal from the university.

Yoo is a former Bush administration lawyer. His teaching position at Boalt is being protested because of a torture memo he created and authored, known as the Bybee Memo. In it, Yoo authored the legal justification for the Bush administration to employ waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques.

It was that document that solidified the legal standing that exempted former President George W. Bush from the War Crimes Act. This memo, in effect, located the necessary loopholes to protect the Bush administration from prosecution.

Boalt Hall dean Christopher Edley has faced a great deal of pressure to dismiss Yoo. In spite of this, he said in an Aug. 17 interview with KQED radio that he will not do so.

“The bottom line, I think, is that unless a faculty member’s behavior interferes with the performance of their duty as a teacher and as a researcher it is very dangerous to open up an inquiry based upon a political poll about his views,” Edley said.

Student activist Evan Carter from the University of California, Santa Cruz, attended the Aug. 19 protest and disagrees with Edley.

“Yoo may not have been the one physically waterboarding all our detainees and prisoners of war but it’s because of him that someone was allowed to. He has just as much blood on his hands as the people who were actually committing the torture,” Carter said.

The Justice Department put out notice that Yoo was under investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility. It is questioning the legitimacy of the legal opinions Yoo employed to create justification. The investigation concerns slanted legal advice to appease the White House, false conclusions and the backing for waterboarding and other torture.

Is such a man is fit to teach law, a profession rooted and dependent on ethics?

Yoo enforced and legitimized backward policies which led to immeasurable suffering and unnecessary deaths.

A 2005 classified CIA Inspector General’s report noted a particular case where a detainee died of hypothermia after being drenched in water and left in the Arabian desert overnight.

The American Civil Liberty Union’s Accountability Project reported that, conservatively, there have been more than 100 deaths from these torture practices. Countless more detainees have been subject to these practices.

Why, in the name of fighting terrorism, do we allow ourselves to terrorize?

Yoo shouldn’t be punished because he supports this “war on terror.” He should not be dismissed for believing that waterboarding is okay.

Yoo should be disbarred from legal practice and dismissed from his professorship at Boalt Hall’s School of Law for his actions and their direct repercussions. A man who advocates torture should not be permitted to teach justice.

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