Cary Nelson has yet another morally preening missive. While universities are hemorrhaging money, this hippie decides that his organization has to anguish on whether the "despicable" (his word) Prof. John Yoo should have the right to speak. Eight paragraphs of first-person agonizing over whether law professor (this is red-on-red for KilltheHumanities, but we'll continue) Yoo, who is an author of memos which argued the legality of harsh interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, was apparently the subject of demonstrators demanding that he be fired.
As we all know, the academy is a place for open inquiry so if you have undesirable opinions, we have to consider whether or not to fire you. The open-mindedness of the free speech left was documented: "Some students vowed they would never take a course with him." And, of course, Cary showed those Neanderthals how much wiser he was: "Others were mightily offended that his presentation (a response to an earlier speaker) had twice been interrupted by protestors who were then escorted out. When they characterized that as a heckler’s veto, I suggested that an interruption of a speech that was allowed to continue was not quite a veto; at that point the conservative students refused to speak to me any longer."
Yeah, Cary, your cutting incisive logical statement "not quite a veto" really put them in their place.
I felt like I was reading George Costanza recounting his brilliance after the event and he inserted all the things he wanted to say.
The second sentence of paragraph three is:
"A tenured faculty member cannot be dismissed for his political views."Well, that should end it, but he spent the remaining time undermining that point trying to say how much he really really really wanted to have Yoo fired.
In addition, he freely throws around the word "torture" and, unless Yoo's memos address the rack and bamboo under the fingernails, I think the president-for-life of the AAUP -- who purports to represent Yoo and others in academia -- should at least take care in his official correspondences as the organization's representative.
Then he indicts, convicts and executes:
"Of course in Yoo’s case the arguments in his memos justifying torture, intellectually irresponsible or not, are not the entire issue. It is their purpose, their use, and their effect that may put him at risk. Thus people have argued that the brutal impact of his memos on the lives of real people bear on his moral authority as a faculty member. His advocacy activities on behalf of the Bush administration, his participation in potential war crimes, are an affront to human decency. Yet had Yoo published his views in scholarly essays and a time when no US sponsored torture was taking place, his legal opinions might have been seen as more absurd than sinister. Yoo’s case is thus inescapably moral and political."
If this is the man standing for academic freedom, we're all lost. Nelson, you'll note, stops the first person and uses "people have argued" instead of taking credit himself. But what's the deal here? Is Yoo right? Or is Cary Nelson saying that if so-called torture, however he defines it, is legal then John Yoo should lie and say it isn't? I think maybe he is.
Nelson himself has defended radicals like Bill Ayers who have had their hands in actually killing people. What have Yoo's memos done? The worst interrogation tactics were waterboarding, performed on three people. Having experienced the actual sensation of drowning, let me say that they will get over it. Other accusations range from sleep deprivation to cigar smoke in the face.
But Nelson talks in abstracts: "torture," "brutal impact," etc. even though friends of his and people and nations they have defended or implicitly defended participated in what most everyone would recognize as torture. Saddam Hussein would put enemies into wood chippers -- feet first. Castro's political prisoners are put in cells with spiked walls so that they cannot rest against them. Now that's what I call torture.
But buried in this nonsense is a gem:
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, though the bar must be very high.
And there we go. The head of the AAUP admits that departments should hire based on PC.
One might thus choose not to invite an avowed Ku Klux Klan member, a Holocaust denier, or an advocate of state torture into your departmental community.
Really, Cary? Really? You're going to compare John Yoo to the Klan or Holocaust deniers? It seems to me that his bar isn't very high at all. I guess it doesn't apply to guys of Nelson's or Ward Churchill's bent. Don't like racism? There are whole departments dedicated to (certain approved forms of) racism. Does it occur to Nelson that any professor who hints that socialism is an appropriate could be easily linked to Stalin's crimes? Ward Churchill called the people who died in the towers on 9/11 "Little Eichmanns". Is he not advocating the trial and execution of the population of New York City?
No, because he doesn't think that the bludgeon will be applied to him, that it will always be in his hand.
Cary Nelson, quit defending academic freedom. You're not helping.
