WarCriminalsWatch Events

World Can't Wait invites you to join us in protest on Yoo's first scheduled class day.  However, rather than engaging in a wild goose chase to locate the classroom, we will pose the question directly to UC Berkeley Law's Dean, Christopher Edley, before the class.  Join us 3:00 PM on Tuesday at Dean Edley's office to ask: "What will be taught behind closed doors that needs to be kept secret? Will this 'secret class' initiate a new policy for Boalt Hall to hide from public accountability?"

The Berkeley Law School still harbors the notorious "Torture Professor" John Yoo on its tenured faculty. Yoo was an architect of the Torture State constructed under the infamous Bush Regime and without the work of Yoo and Bush lawyers like him the horrors of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib would not have been possible.  Yoo's work inside the Office of Legal Counsel made torture "legal" and this is now the focus of legal and congressional scrutiny that may eventually lead to Yoo's prosecution for war crimes.

The official university policy voiced repeatedly by the law school's Dean Christopher Edley is that Yoo's actions while at Bush's Department of Justice do not affect his professional or ethical ability to teach law.  But the facts proving otherwise are well known, and ongoing protest has kept this in the public eye.  The New York Times just ran an interview with Yoo, and mentioned that protest can be expected on January 12.  This prediction was picked up next in the weekly San Francisco Bay Guardian, and then USA Today repeated the same thing.  All this before World Can't Wait issued a single public protest announcement!

After a nationwide storm of publicity spotlighting UC for keeping an international war criminal in its classroom, now Yoo is relegated to co-teaching only one course: a seminar on the California Constitution, to only 24 students. Perhaps UC/Boalt found it just too shameful to keep the "Torture Professor" teaching required courses in constitutional law, separation of powers, and ethics!  Yet John Yoo is still teaching at Berkeley.

In line with President Obama's "let's look forward, not backward" -- the powers-that-be are still excusing and shielding John Yoo behind the excuse of "academic freedom."  They still turn a blind eye to the creation of the US Torture State.  However,  John Yoo still must be fired, disbarred, and prosecuted for his work therein.  Let the world know these demands are firm, they represent conscience and responsibility, and they are not going away!  Your presence and voice are needed, to raise these demands.