OU forum should make no apologies for booking Yoo as speaker

To the Editor:

The undersigned history graduate students want to express our support for the George Washington Forum's decision to invite Professor John Yoo to speak on campus last week. We are disappointed that, as indicated in the letter to the Athens NEWS on Oct. 28, some of our fellow graduate students think Professor Yoo should have been prevented from speaking on campus because they disagree with his views on constitutional law and his legal work for the Bush administration.

The signers of this letter hold differing views about professor Yoo, who during the Bush administration had the unenviable task of determining the legal limits for interrogating captured Al Qaeda leaders in order to collect the intelligence needed to prevent future terrorist attacks. We also hold a variety of opinions regarding the foreign policy of the Bush years, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the "war on terror." But all of us agree that as a former public official and a current law professor at the University of California at Berkley, John Yoo was an appropriate speaker for the George Washington Forum and OU to host. Indeed, professor Yoo's commitment to taking part in a public dialogue about law and government policy is highly commendable, and there were open and critical discussions of his views both at the seminar for graduate students and at his public talk.

We respect professor Yoo's critics here on campus and the intensity with which they hold their views. We are also impressed with their level of activism. Fittingly, they have been free to voice their opposition to Yoo over the past week and a half. Some did this by protesting outside his talk, and others by asking him pointed questions during the question-and-answer session. Still others, including some of our fellow graduate students, wrote the Oct. 28 letter and organized a public forum earlier this week.

However, the argument that Professor Yoo should not have been free to express his views on our campus, and that members of the campus community should not have been free to hear and question him, betrays a profoundly illiberal conception of the university and of academic life. At heart such a vision is intolerant and exclusionary, and it stands in contrast to the willingness to engage in debate displayed by John Yoo himself.

Michael Cook, Sarah Iler, Bill King and Todd Pfeffer
History graduate students, Ohio University

Department of History

Ohio University

Athens