The University of California-Berkeley and its hometown are defined in many ways by activism and lively debate: The Free Speech Movement, the People's Park protest and Vietnam War protests all happened here. Recent demonstrations include the contentious debate over the $500 million BP/UC Berkeley partnership, the "showdown" over a Marine Corps recruiting station in downtown Berkeley, and the 21-month stand-off between tree-sitters and university officials over the contested construction of a new athletic complex.

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So it's no surprise that the tenured professorship of John Yoo, the main drafter of the infamous Office of Legal Council's torture memos, has stirred controversy and protest, too. The memos he composed – the more infamous of which dealt with the curtailing of Geneva Conventions as applied to suspected al-Qaida and Taliban leaders, narrowing the definition of torture, and justifications for warrantless wiretapping – were written during the time he served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, according to his university profile, "he worked on issues involving foreign affairs, national security and the separation of powers."

Yoo, who has been a faculty member at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law since 1993, has returned to the campus this fall after a spring semester stint at Orange County's Chapman University School of Law. According to the Associated Press, four people who were part of a larger protest calling for the dismissal of John Yoo were recently arrested on the UC Berkeley campus. The protesters also staged a mock arrest of Yoo and wore uniforms (black hoods and an orange jumpsuit) similar to those worn by Abu Ghraib prisoners.

These are not the first protests of Yoo's tenured position at UC Berkeley, and they're surely not the last. In 2008, an e-mail campaign by American Freedom Campaign was under way. In part, its position on Yoo states:

". . . While an unknown number of people suffer the aftereffects of illegal torture he encouraged, Professor Yoo is teaching, writing, and generally enjoying life in California. This is flat out wrong. John Yoo should not only be disqualified from ever serving in government again, but he should also be prohibited from spreading his distorted view of the law and the role of lawyers to young law students. He must be fired. And the man to do it is Christopher Edley Jr., dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law."

In response to the demands for Yoo's firing -- and some also think he should be disbarred -- Edley released a statement in April of 2008. Edley cited Yoo's First Amendment and due process protections, saying further, "My sense is that the vast majority of legal academics with a view of the matter disagree with substantial portions of Professor Yoo's analyses, including a great many of his colleagues at Berkeley. If, however, this strong consensus were enough to fire or sanction someone, then academic freedom would be meaningless."

According to a 2008 "Inside Higher Ed" article dealing with this topic, some within the academic legal realm supported Yoo even though they didn't agree with his politics or positions. Brian Leiter, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, called the e-mails by American Freedom Campaign a "disgraceful attack on the academy," claiming that "tenure, and academic freedom, would mean nothing if every professor with views deemed morally reprehensible or every professor who produced a shoddy piece of work -- while inside or outside the academy -- could be fired."

Elizabeth Popham, a junior majoring in peace and conflict studies and art at UC Berkeley, sympathizes with the notion that the school should endorse and embrace diverse perspectives and philosophies. "We certainly shouldn't be excluding anyone just because they're unpopular," says Popham, "but this man threw the Geneva Conventions out the window, and what he was ultimately responsible for really crosses the line. I worry that his presence could potentially lead to students adopting that perspective. Any potential student could think to themselves, 'Undermining human rights is OK.'"

Doug Wade, a senior at UC Berkeley double-majoring in English and Russian, takes a different view. "Part of attending a liberal university is being truly liberal -- not in the sense of those who are opposed to the conservatives, but in an earlier sense, as in accepting of other viewpoints. Although I may not entirely agree with Yoo's legal position, I hardly think that it affects his ability to teach or his right to hold a position on faculty." He continued in an e-mail: "I think it is kind of ridiculous, considering the fact that John Yoo only wrote legal opinions in memos, and didn't enforce or propose any of the techniques . . . [I] hope to see him continue to teach."

In his 2008 statement, Dean Edley noted, "We press our students to grapple with these matters, and in the legal literature Professor Yoo and his critics do battle. One can oppose and even condemn an idea, but I do not believe that in a university we can fearfully refuse to look at it. That would not be the best way to educate, nor a promising way to seek deeper understanding in a world of continual, strange revolutions." Edley suggested that the controversy could be a proverbial "teachable moment," though it seems that then, as today, no consensus has emerged as to whether Boalt Hall has accurately assessed such a decision and its reverberating effect.

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