The Wake

The University of Minnesota hosts countless academic lectures and debates, but not many of these events come with U of M Police Department security patrolling the entrances and aisles.

In a stuffy and crowded, University Law School, lecture hall on Wednesday, Nov. 16, John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, took part in a debate over presidential war powers. Formally, he debated against John Radsan, president of the Iranian-American Bar Association and associate professor of law at William Mitchell College of Law. Informally, Yoo faced an unfriendly audience, a large portion were protestors and human rights activists who exercised their right to free speech in a number of ways.

Information sheets about torture were passed around the room, some of them encouraging audience members to raise their hands or stand up and read questions to Yoo in order to disrupt the debate. Those who spoke up but did not leave quietly were physically escorted from the room by University security and police. “We were asking Yoo questions about his record and we spoke until we were asked to leave,” says Carrie Anne Johnson, University alumnus and one of several protestors who gathered at the front entrance of Mondale Hall after leaving the debate. A few demonstrators stood outside the room with picket signs condemning torture (some hung around afterwards, next to a table that presented Yoo’s new book for sale), but more signs were present inside the lecture hall, propped up for the debaters to see. Other protestors made their presence known through a dramatic silence, their mouths and bodies covered in bright orange.

The demonstrations were sponsored and endorsed by several organizations, including T3: Tackling Torture at the Top (a Women Against Military Madness subcommittee), Anti-War Committee, Iraq Peace Action Coalition, Amnesty U of M Chapter, Anti-War Organizing League, and Youth Against War and Racism, but many of the demonstrators themselves were driven to attend the lecture simply as concerned and upset individuals. “It was Yoo that brought me out tonight,” says Amelia Smith, first-year University student. “He’s a criminal. He’s helped our government commit atrocities and war crimes and I came here to tell him that.”

Most of the controversy surrounds a 2002 law memorandum (sometimes referred to as one of the “torture memos”) that Yoo wrote during his time in the Department of Justice. In this memo, Yoo wrote that the Geneva Conventions, the War Crimes Act and other international treaties and federal laws do not apply to “non-state” detainees. Accordingly, detainees who are members ofAl Qaeda and/or Taliban militia are not covered by any treaty or federal law that calls for the humane treatment of prisoners of war. The memorandum provided many reasons why the protections of the WCA and Geneva Conventions do not apply to Al Qaeda and Taliban militia fighters. The memo stated they do not represent a nation state; they refuse to wear uniforms or distinctive insignia; they do not observe the Geneva Conventions themselves. It also stated the president may decide to apply Geneva and other standards of conduct to the treatment of detainees if he so chooses. The memo was co-authored by Robert Delahunty, Special Counsel, who now is employed as a law professor at St. Thomas University and has faced demonstrations there as well. Yoo himself is now a professor at Berkeley, where protestors have demanded that he renounce the memos or resign (neither of which he has done).

Since, according to Yoo and Delahunty, treaties and federal laws prohibiting torture do not protect “non-state” or rogue state combatants, many people understand the memo is a means to authorize or condone the torture of such individuals. They also believe these statements have been used by the U.S. military in order to justify acts of torture. However, there are others who don’t find the controversy to be well-grounded and point out that the memo deals with a strictly legal matter and doesn’t explicitly call for or encourage torture of any kind.

Jason Adkins, law student and president of the Federalist Society student group who helped to organize the debate, says the purpose of the event “wasn’t to be controversial.” The Federalist Society tries to “stimulate discussion and enrich the intellectual life of the law school,” Adkins says. “Our events deal with tough legal questions and we try to pick important topics that are pressing legal issues.” The group first got a sense that the debate with Yoo might be particularly controversial when lawyer Barbara Frey, the head of the Human Rights Program at the U, refused to debate Yoo. Demonstrations also occurred earlier in the day at a similar event at the University of St. Thomas. “Still, we didn’t expect the U’s event to be as confrontational as it was. It turned into a big fiasco,” Adkins says.

While protestors were allowed to pass out literature, Adkins and other law students took issue with the more disruptive ways that demonstrators made their voices heard. “I find it particularly ironic that folks who are so concerned with the fair treatment of people can be so rude and disrespectful,” Adkins says. To many of the protestors, though, disrupting the event was the main goal in attending it. “We just wanted to tell Yoo that he’s not welcome,” Smith says.

Whether or not he got their message, Yoo certainly heard protestors’ voices. “I’ve debated this question at law schools all around the country,” said Yoo at the end of the debate. “But this is the only one I’ve spoken at where there’s been disruptions, I’m sorry to say.” Before he could finish, many in the audience broke into applause.