The rich diversity of opinion from A to B

So the New York Times holds a symposium on the question of “Torture and Academic Freedom.” The question is begged, of course, by the very title of the symposium, but never mind.

Five experts were asked by the Times to comment on the case of law professor John C. Yoo, who while serving in the Bush Justice Department wrote (in the Times’ masterfully weasly words) the “memos that critics say were used to justify the torture of terrorism suspects.” Champions of protecting the United States from terror might say they were used to a different end, but never mind.

The experts were:

• Brian Leiter, University of Chicago Law School
• Kathleen Clark, Washington University School of Law
• Cary Nelson, American Association of University Professors
• Carlos Villareal, National Lawyers Guild
• Brad Wendel, Cornell University Law School

Why these five? The answer becomes clear quickly.

Professor Leiter defends Yoo against the charge of research misconduct, but finds it necessary to add that “One may think (as I do) such views implausible, badly argued and morally odious. . . .” He closes by saying that “John Yoo has earned international moral opprobrium for his views.”

Professor Clark says that “when John Yoo served as a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, he violated two of his professional obligations as a lawyer: to be candid in giving legal advice to his client, and to adequately inform his client about the state of the law.”

Professor Nelson, whose organization (the AAUP) is dedicated to protecting the academic freedom of professors like Yoo, says that “had he published his views in essays at a time when no U.S. sponsored torture was taking place, his legal opinions might have been seen as more absurd than sinister. The case is thus inescapably moral and political. Such considerations are clearly fair when deciding whether or not to hire a faculty member in the first place. You have a right not to hire someone whose views you consider reprehensible.”

Mr Villarreal holds that Yoo’s actions at Justice “led to the torture, humiliating abuse, permanent injury and even death of detainees who were never tried or convicted of anything. To protect his work in the Justice Department under the guise of ‘academic freedom’ is to protect the yelling of ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

Professor Wendel says: “The strongest legal criticism made of Professor Yoo and other Bush administration lawyers is not based on disagreement over policy or even morality. They were not implementing unjust laws; they were actively circumventing just laws.”

This, in short, is what passes for debate at the New York Times. Not one defender of Yoo is asked to contribute. No one is consulted who might dispute Cary Nelson’s claim that universities have a right to blackball those whose views are considered reprehensible by a dominant majority. No one to observe that it is precisely this attitude which is most inimical to academic freedom and has (as Mark Bauerlein wrote recently) “left the humanities scrambling for respect on campus and left humanities professors searching for convictions and grounds.” (Nelson is, significantly, an English professor.)

Intellectuals dearly love to repeat the pseudo-Voltairean boast I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, except that they are far more interested in drawing attention to their disapproval than subordinating it to the defense of intellectual freedom. The very lack of diversity in the Times symposium demonstrates as much.