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Eleventh in a series
TPM and WaPo are reporting that Georgetown University has decided not to continue to employ Doug Feith.
Word from campus is that both students and faculty had pretty much had it with the arch war criminal walking around campus
reports TPM’s M. J. Rosenberg.
Al Kamen at the WaPo had this:
Asked about Feith’s status, Robert Gallucci, dean of Georgetown’s foreign service school, told us that when Feith was hired — something that caused an uproar among the faculty — it was understood he "was on a two-year appointment." Any decision not to renew should not be seen as "a judgment on his performance," Gallucci said, noting that Feith’s students’ "course evaluations were really good."
Why am I including this in the Yoo series? Because this increases the pressure on Boalt Hall, Berkeley’s Law School, to disassociate it self from Yoo.
You may recall that the Dean of Boalt Hall defended his decision to keep Yoo on because he felt that his actions away from campus should not be counted against him. According to that WaPo quote, Feith’s on-campus performance has been fine, yet his presence on that campus sends the wrong message that the university condones what he has done off campus and so he will be present no longer.
There is an important distinction in the academic world, Feith did not have tenure, nor was he even in a tenure track position. Yoo had tenure before he left Boalt Hall to go work for the government. Their big mistake was allowing him to take a leave of absence rather than resigning outright to go to DOJ. In this way he was able to preserve his tenure status.
Nonetheless, the rationale used by Georgetown is important because it changes the analysis of Yoo’s continued presence at Boalt Hall and increases the pressure on the school administration to disassociate the school from Yoo’s war crimes.
[Editor's note: This photo by takomabibelot features a banner created and designed by Firedoglake reader BonnieT of Austin, Texas, where she operates OpposeTorture.org.]
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Eeeeeeexcellent.
First?
Well, well!
LHP!
doug feith and egon from ghostbusters – separated at birth?
Life is hard out here for a warpimp. Just ask Bertie Walnuts.
Loosehead!
Good news indeed
he can spend time with Alberto Gonzales and his family
Just because he has tenure allows them to keep a war criminal on staff? Boalt Hall is just as ball-less as the Blue Dogs in the House.
Digg it for Looseheadprop!! Great post LP
You can Digg it right here
Now that’s just mean. Good for you.
Your digg wasn’t fast enough!!!! :>)
He can join Alberto in the unemployment line. Not much of a market for torture apologists I guess.
don’t forget to sign the MoveOn petetion:
Feith no more.
Feith Yoo
O/T
Has anyone seen this website?
http://www.recreate68.org/
With Rush talking riots today, this makes me go hmmmmm
And if you don’t recall, you can check it out my earlier post on it here.
I’m guessing that the phones were ringing at Boalt Hall pretty hard again today, once this news broke from Georgetown. It’s going to be another long weekend for the Dean, I’m afraid.
I would question paying tuition for one of my kids to be taught by the “stupidest man on the planet.” (edited quote)
I wonder how many parents said the exact same thing to the dean?
Ya gotta love this:
[1]
McCain criticizes Bush, congress on hurricanes
Pledges botched disaster response will never happen again
NEW ORLEANS [AP]- Republican presidential candidate John McCain took stock of still-hurricane-damaged areas of New Orleans on Thursday and declared that if the disaster had happened on his watch, he would have immediately landed at the nearest Air Force base, drawing a sharp contrast to President Bush’s handling of the tragedy.
McCain called the response to Hurricane Katrina “a perfect storm” of mismanagement by federal, state and local governments.
[2]
Photo of what McCain was doing on the day Katrina struck New Orleans:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news…..-515h.html
Oh joy, another Brook’s Brothers riot. Maybe we should have an Abercrombie and Fitch riot in a Minneapolis airport mensroom.
Let’s also hope they’re paying attention at Stanford…just in case Condi comes a-trollin’ their way.
Alberto just has the wrong approach in his new employment endeavors. I’m pretty sure he’s seeking immediate partnership or whatever the term is… He needs to lower his ambition just a tad and seek an intern or maybe and associate position and actually LEARN THE FUCKING LAW!!!
He might just get some hits
Ya think? Or am I still being too generous?
;~P
Full Feith: Uncredit.
Evening, LHP. Great news from Georgetown.
Some of my anti-torture signs:
http://freewayblogger.blogspot…..llery.html
Have a Nice Uday!
I don’t understand what is happening to the old wingnut welfare system, it seems to be breaking down. That’s the thing about Bush family loyalists, it’s a one way street.
The Bushies use them up and then kick them to the curb.
Let them eat cake. I wonder if anybody has bothered to look up Senator McRanky’s voting record on aide for Katrina? Certainly no one in the press has. Naturally I’m talking about bloggers of course. Another example of the need for a bloggers ethics panel for sure.
Peterr had a terrific post a few days ago explaining why and how Yoo had forfeited his right to tenure by violation of academic standards
Now, that is really odd. I submitted a Digg, and copied the URL, and came back to the front page and verified that my Digg was the official Digg. Then I embedded a link to it in my comment. Meanwhile, you Dugg, apparently with more success than I had. Now your Digg shows as the official Digg, and it shows that I Dugg it (which I didn’t–yours, I mean!) And now when you click on my link, you get a 404 notice.
I do not understand this Digg thing.
I did see that photo earlier but it still needs to be publicized to the greater public!!
Why thank you!
(See my comment above @ 20 for the link)
They are just a bunch of deep holes :>)
bwahahahaha
I spit in his general direction
Feith will take his foreign policy expertise (hahahahahahahha, sorry) over to AEI. Then he, Krauthammer from WaPo and the Kagans can do circle jerks while lizard brainstorming their next intellectual disaster.
Maybe the dean needs to go along with Yoo know hoo
What’s this I hear about some neocon named Dugg Feith?
Apparently, they did not Digg him at Georgetown.
I poop on them from great heights.
Maybe just maybe they will travel to another country and be arrested and sent to the Hague… ah shit we couldn’t be so lucky… :>(
Nice job
I like your posts, LHP. Seems I always learn stuff that I did not know, and this is good news.
I got a LTE published this week.
very nice!!
Hope you gave ‘em hell.
No — the dean himself is a standup guy.
He’s just wrong on this one, trying to defend the indefensible. It’s not about academic freedom, and Edley probably knows that. Some have suggested that he’s hoping that others will nail Yoo for something criminal, so that he doesn’t have to go through the much more strenuous (for him) process of removing a tenured professor. It isn’t ever easy to do — for good reasons — but there are times when it must be done.
This is one of those times.
Cardboard, paint and an overhead projector… that’s all it takes.
The Jesuits seem to be a bit crisper and more precise in their thinking than the Boalt Hall bunch.
I understand that Boalt Hall doesn’t want Yoo to do even more damage by being the instrument for the erosion of academic freedom, but THEY ARE A LAW SCHOOL FACULTY, they ought to be able to distinguish the Yoo situation, which involves a total deviation from normal academic standards for citation and support, from an invasion of free speech.
This is not that subtle, as the Georgetown faculty has just demonstrated
What was it about?
Got any idea how many sets of real cojones they’d need just to buy a plane ticket online? I mean, with a combined IQ of about 3 below plant life, these guys make the guys in Miami look like geniuses. An’ speaking of that, this USA in Miami must be a real masochist. Third time’s a charm?
LHP: “You may recall that the Dean of Boalt Hall defended his decision to keep Yoo on because he felt that his actions away from campus should not be counted against him.”
Would the Dean have employed the same logic if a Nazi war criminal had applied for employment there, rather than an American one?
That photo should be as heavily republished as The Hug at least through the election.
In Boalt Hall’s defense, the Jesuits have wearing their black robes for centuries. Compared with them, the folks at Boalt are babes in the woods.
I recall reading somewhere recently that, whereas the federal “non-terror” case conviction rate was ~92%, the WOT trial conviction rate was about 19% to date.
Heh. You know it. It was in response to a recovering local newsreader turned business tycoon saying congress is wasting energy trying to lower gas prices. Should focus on social spending instead. Sort of a mini George F. ucking Will.
I am interested in learning in what jurisdiction(s) Yoo is admitted to the Bar, and in what their codes of professional responsibility say about bringing disrepute to the legal profession, or other offenses that might be applicable to Yoo’s conduct. Getting him disbarred might be easier than getting his tenure taken away, and might also make the latter easier.
I don’t know how to find that out. Do you, LHP?
Pardon the OT loosehead, but Oilfieldguy — I hope you’ll write more for us about economic difficulties in the trucking industry. You’ve had some great comments on that lately, and your perspective is unique here.
Provocateurism ain’t what it used to be. The Half Hour News Hour version of a “revolutionary” poster.
He’s a member of the bar in Pennsylvania.
Here’s a taste of the attitudes and sh*t our troops have to endure… We need to get Out of Iraq, Now!
My response was the price of oil was not simply supply and demand but wild speculation and government sanctioned violence in the ME. Also, the oil and gas lobby spent over $500,000.00 dollars a day during the 110th congress. Addressed corporate welfare and such, you know, facts and junk.
Speaking of the Nazi’s, the other day I referred to Condi as the 21st century von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s Foreign Minister. That got me to thinking about in what ways did they really compare. Soooo, just a small bit of research revealed that
“Ribbentrop’s task was to ensure that the world was convinced that Germany sincerely wanted an arms-limitation treaty while also ensuring that such a treaty never actually emerged.” (Wikipedia)
Remind anyone of Condi’s making peace noises between Israel and Palestine?
A summer project. This is gonna be fun.
And no, Wiki is not a primary source. First I’m using Shirer’s “Rise and Fall” and Michael Bloch’s biography of Ribbentrop. I was struck by the immediate hit I got in Wiki though, which made me think that this just might be a worthwhile endeavour.
The trucking folks were on the hill today, telling our congresscritters it cost about $1200.00 to fuel up a big truck. Said it’s killing the trucking industry. I haven’t seen a JB Hunt truck in over a month. Hold on to your hats folks, it’s fixin’ to get real bad.
Don’t forget the fairly lockstep inverse linear correlation with the decline of the USD vs the Euro.
I’m a blue collar from the Bay Area and if you can help send this pig down, well thank you.
jo6pac
In defense of the current Dean, Yoo was hired and got tenure under a different Dean. Yoo took a leave of absence, rather than resigning, when he went to work for DOJ. In that way Yoo preserved his tenured status.
This Dean inherited Yoo.
Word pictures are vivid tonight.
Too vivid! lol
The Jesuits seem to be a bit crisper and more precise in their thinking than the Boalt Hall bunch.
Not to say that it excuses Edley’s off-focus response at all, but doesn’t this issue of misusing argument to justify the unjustifiable play to the oldest strengths of the Jesuits?
To me the amazing thing was that the two-cent casuist was hired at Gtown in the first place.
Yoo is admitted in Pennsylvania
O ye of little Feith
BobbyG, heh, if you want to do a heads up with the dollar and the Euro, our stock market has lost 40% of its value. Oil will be traded with Euro’s, we just don’t know when.
They main thing he wasn’t an employee of the Govt when he did this, He doesn’t have any protection. I’m not a L any thoughts from the Bar
jo6pac
Do you know if Condi is on leave from Stanford or did she resign?
As little as possible …
I was wondering about the initial decision to hire him as well. Evidently that first contract caused a firestorm on campus.
Oh, yeah.
I watch these trends routinely, USD vs Euro, Yen, Rupee, etc.
Are you talking about the Yoo memos? He was most definitely an employee of the gov’t when he wrote them. He worked for DOJ in the Office of Legal Counsel
I thought Lawyers were members of some professional organization. How can one such as Yoo so clearly pervert the tenets of law and yet remain in good standing? Isn’t this a tacit endorsement of the Yoo kaleidescopic constitutional viewpoint? Shouldn’t he be defrocked or something?
I have no idea
She resigned.
lhp – Another great post in the Series, thanks so much!
In the same way that well-subscribed Art Museums don’t display any Velvet Elvis paintings, our most honored Academia shouldn’t be show-casing Yoo.
Boalt Hall runs the risk of re-framing Tenure as an “Equal Opportunity Welfare, Without Distinction of Quality” – bringing into question the Enlightenment’s whole purpose in the pursuit of higher knowledge.
As We evolve our Understanding of this Great World, should We be obligated to Give Unfettered Voice to those whose (secretly produced) work can, today, be refuted by US – mere laypeople – with the help of lhp’s professional explanation?
Should the Law School ‘curate’ Yoo at Our Expense?
For Yoo to be disbarred (I like defrocked) someone would have to bring an appropriate complaint to the Disciplinary Committe in Pa. Someone with Standing. And it’s going to be hard, b/c usually they tag you for stealing from clients or for being a substance abuser.
The violation of academic norms is an easier call.
good for georgetown … now if berkeley could do the same …
Paging David Crosby
Teh Google found this in the latest issue of Stanford Magazine:
Looks to me like the Yoo situation all over again.
Nice catch.
I was going by memory, but you seemed to have nailed it.
Blech
Please send me the linky for that. I’d like to review it before I start on my facebook petition to the Faculty Senate asking them to step in and give the estimable Yoo for just those reasons.
I agree. I was a postdoc at Berkeley and Stanford and they both have war criminals on the faculty. Absolutely disgusting. Maybe I’ll fudge my resume and move those years to Georgetown.
Oh, and one more thing.
From that article:
I’m not sure Dr. Rice’s contribution is exactly what the crafters of that policy had in mind. Perhaps Stanford Alum Chelsea Clinton might want to make her thoughts known to the Stanford Administration about Rice’s “high government service.”
Here you go.
What happens when students don’t sign up for their courses? Unless they would both teach a required course where they would be the only professor offering the course, seems to me the student body could make them irrelevant. Show up three times a week to stand in front of an empty classroom? Yeah, that’s gotta be a real ego boost.
It’s all about not looking like you’re ’soft on crime’. A friend of a friend got into trouble and the DA pressured him into a plea bargain, because ‘we’ll keep trying you until we get the verdict we want’ and the family barely could pay the lawyer for one trial, never mind more than one (there was no real case, any more than in Florida, but the DA and the police have to look big for the voters). It’s not about justice for some of them, it’s about winning and making sure you lose big.
edit – Unless they
would…From the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct for attorneys:
“Rule 1.2 Scope of Representation and Allocation of Authority Between Client and Lawyer
(d) A lawyer shall not counsel a client to engage, or assist a client, in conduct that the lawyer
knows is criminal or fraudulent, but a lawyer may discuss the legal consequences of any proposed course of conduct with a client and may counsel or assist a client to make a good faith effort to determine the validity, scope, meaning or application of the law.”
Is LHP still around? Do you think the first part of this provision applies to Yoo’s counseling or assistance of the Bush administration in committing torture?
There has been discussion of doing that, but these folks are long past embarrassment. I also understand that at Berkeley people occasionally show up for Yoo’s lectures in orange jumpsuits and they have absolutely no effect on him.
I had thought about that but I also thought, geez, this is so high profile, how can this clown keep smashing his head against the wall. But then, Dr al-Arian is being driven insane by this nutjob USA in Virginia. I’m in St Pete so that is really personal with me. But you’re right, it’s all about winning. Their careers depend on it. That’s gotta change.
Thanks for posting that!
Thanks much!
Workin’ on it. Will keep you folks apprised.
Railway guys are grinning though.
LHP, thanks for this great post.
In case Boalt forgets over the next few weeks, the locals will remind them on May 17: Graduation Day
Indeed. Well done, LHP.
LHP: “You may recall that the Dean of Boalt Hall defended his decision to keep Yoo on because he felt that his actions away from campus should not be counted against him.”
Actually his extended time away from campus both while he was in the tenure application process, and while he was supposed to be serving the STUDENTS at Boalt…SHOULD be held against Yoo!
The tenure application process has almost never allowed Associate Professors to gain tenure if they are away more than one in the first six years at the UC. Yoo was away, as far as I can determine 3-4 years clerking for Justice Thomas and serving as Counsel to the Senate during the Clinton Impeachment. Somehow he received tenure in 1999, DESPITE THIS. There wasn’t even a delay to make him reacquire the time he was absent. Then he left Berkeley again when Bush was elected President. AND, when he was supposed to return to Berkeley at the end of his term with Bush…he didn’t return to Boalt…but became a visiting Professor at…the University of Chicago, The Free University of Amsterdam, and a think tank in Genoa, Italy. IOW he took a vacation!
And he still serves as a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute rather than devoting his full attention to teaching at Berkeley. Something is rotten at Boalt!
Hmmmmm indeed.
Dean Edley;
Wrong is never right, torture is wrong. UC Berekeley is the best. Let’s keep it that way. Mr.Yoo has to go. Writing a brief to justify torture is imoral and illegal. You have no choice. When Mr. Yoo was given leave to work for the Whie House that was not a blank check by U.C. Berkeley to break the law. He knew that now he must pay the price. You owe him nothing.
Thank You,
Hoorah…I attended Gtown, and my father taught philosophy there for over forty years. It has been a major thorn in my side that this shitstick was passed off onto students there.
I only wish that they had canned Jeanne Kirkpatrick a couple of decades ago.
The link is at Peter’s #20 above
Sorry, LHP was sound asleep by thetime you typed that.
Yes, that would be a relvant provision to use with Yoo. I say without having looked at the case law related to thaat provision, which may tailor it’s meaning. I do not practice in Pa.
If you check this thread, do you have links for this? Could you send the to proploosehead at gmail? Thanks
lhp – Your 85, my 84: I think we are saying the same thing, basically – regardless of whether his Legal Opinions hold up, or not, Yoo is a Fake in the Academic Arts and Rigors of Law, imvho.
Berkeley would rightfully go to the wall for a Member in Good Standing with his/her Illustrious Academic Peer Group, but equally rightfully ‘remove’ any Member whose Considered Opinion was boot-strapped by Methods Injurious to the Integrity of the Academic System, as a whole.
If Plagarism can get a Tenured Professor fired, surely Making Shit Up qualifies, too!
Yoo is a worm. It seems to me that if someone could find that email from Addington to Yoo that says, “I know you think this stuff is illegal torture, but you really MUST put together some memo justifying this conduct because everybody’s afraid of going to jail,” then there would be a basis to “prosecute” him as a lawyer or to seek a tenure revokation.
But that request from Addington came over the phone, and the emails are lost anyway.
Yoo’s defense here is perfect: I actually believed that hooey I put in the memos.