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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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