The issue here is whether John Yoo and others who advocated for torture of detainees under the "wartime" policies of the Bush Administration should be teaching at Universities. Is it academic freedom or is it torture? John Yoo, Condi Rice, Robert Delahunty are amongst those Bush Administration lawyers who played significant roles in enabling torture but they all have now successfully retreated back into academia where their law school administrations are protecting and justifying their prior actions under the notion of "academic freedom".

Is It Academic Freedom or Torture?

John Choon Yoo (born June 10, 1967 in Seoul) is an American attorney and former official in the United States Department of Justice.

He has been a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Law (Boalt Hall) since 1993. Yoo has authored two books on presidential power and the war on terrorism, as well as numerous journal and newspaper articles. He has held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Trento and has also been a visiting law professor at the Free University of Amsterdam, the University of Chicago, and Chapman University School of Law. Since 2003, Yoo has also worked as a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. He also writes a monthly column, entitled Closing Arguments, for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Yoo's legal opinions were controversial within the Bush Administration. Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly opposed the invalidation of the Geneva Conventions, while U.S. Navy general counsel Alberto Mora campaigned internally against what he saw as the "catastrophically poor legal reasoning" and dangerous extremism of Yoo's legal opinions. In December 2003, Yoo's memo on permissible interrogation techniques was repudiated by the Office of Legal Counsel, then under the direction of Jack Goldsmith, as legally unsound. In June 2004, another of Yoo's memos on torture was leaked to the press, after which it was repudiated by Goldsmith and the OLC.

See References for documents relating to the Wikipedia article about John Yoo

Yoo's Legal Opinions
Regarding torture of detainees
See also: Enhanced interrogation techniques

After he left the Department of Justice, it was revealed that Yoo authored memos, including co-authoring the Bybee memo defining torture and American habeas corpus obligations narrowly. advocate enhanced interrogation techniques, while pointing out that refuting the Geneva Conventions would reduce the possibility American officials and surrogates face future prosecution under the US War Crimes Act of 1996 for actions taken in the War on Terror. In addition, a new definition of torture was issued. Most actions that fall under the international definition do not fall within this new definition advocated by the U.S . Several top military lawyers, including Alberto J. Mora, reported that policies allowing methods equivalent to torture were officially handed down from the highest levels of the administration, and led an effort within the Department of Defense to put a stop to those policies and instead mandate non-coercive interrogation standards.

On December 1, 2005, Yoo appeared in a debate in Chicago with University of Notre Dame law professor Doug Cassel. During the debate Cassel asked Yoo, "If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?", to which Yoo replied "No treaty." Cassel followed up with "Also no law by Congress — that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo...", to which Yoo replied "I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that."

On June 26, 2008, Yoo and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and former counsel David Addington testified before the House Judiciary Committee in a contentious hearing on detainee treatment, interrogation methods and the extent of executive branch authority.