Mood Over Mukasey Changes
Eagleionline StaffBy Jesse Stellato
There is some evidence that the mood at Boston College Law School is changing over the recent selection of Attorney General Michael Mukasey to speak at the 2008 Law School Commencement exercises.
Though students' first reaction was one of general, but not wholly unqualified praise, some students and alumni are now speaking out against the administration.
"While the process [of selecting Mukasey] alone appears to have been deeply flawed, the substance of the decision and the message it sends to the BCLS Community raises fundamental questions about the identity of the institution," said Dan Roth '04 in an email.
Roth has also started a group, "Waterboarding IS torture," on Facebook. The group currently has nine members, including Professor Ruth-Arlene W. Howe.
Roth continued:
Our Mission Statement reads: 'We encourage our students to develop their own individual commitment to others and to explore those themes which are central to the Jesuit tradition: the dignity of the human person, the advancement of the common good and compassion for the poor." It also expresses the goal of preparing students for a "constructive, responsible, and loving use of their knowledge." How these high principles can be reconciled with awarding Attorney General Mukasey our Founders' Medal and calling him the ultimate role model for the Class of 2008 is beyond comprehension.
While at Boston College, Roth won the prestigious Drinan Family Fund Award for his commitment to social justice and public interest law.
Roth's Facebook group comes on the heels of a current student's Op/Ed in yesterday's Eagleionline. That student, writing under the name "Dmoe," questioned whether the administration's invitation should be withdrawn:
Boston College Law School—particularly because it is a Jesuit institution—and its students should give more thought to the ramifications of the school's choice of commencement speaker. The administration should strongly reconsider its decision to invite Mr. Mukasey to deliver the commencement address to the Class of 2008.
Reader Comments (9)
I found this e-mail from Professor Plater posted on the Facebook group site as a discussion thread also worth noting:
Thank you for posting Prof. Plater's e-mail. It is excellent.
My own personal problem with this situation is the hypocrisy of the decision itself. In the past few years, the University as a whole decided it had the right to regulate debate at this school when issues supposedly contrary to Catholic morality were to be represented. More specifically, women's rights groups and gay rights groups could effectively have their speakers cancelled, or required to have a counterbalancing speaker featured, if they presented speakers promoting the right to an abortion or that, God forbid, living as a homosexual was not a sin.
Promptly after this policy, the University invited Condi Rice to speak at the undergraduate commencement, citing that it was an honor to get a sitting Secretary of State to come speak at Boston College - despite her role as an architect in the Iraq war, a war that the Catholic Church has called unjust and unwarranted.
The Mukasey invitation arises from the same set of troubling circumstances. What the University seems to be saying is that if you are an important enough person, and your presence brings "prestige" to the University in a rather worldy, un-Jesuit kind of way, then we'll gladly put aside your views for our own self-aggrandizement.
Whether or not Mukasey personally allows waterboarding under his tenure, whether or not he personally finds it repugnant or not, he has failed to stand up for justice and human rights as the top law enforcement official in this country, and thus is not a speaker who reflects our Jesuit values. His invitation baffles and surprises me, and I continue to wonder what our goal is: to be the best law school, or, as Dean Garvey would supposedly purport, "to be the best Catholic law school."
What disturbs me most about this invitation is the decision to award Mukasey the Founder's Medal.
According to past BCLS commencement press releases, the "Founder's Medal is the highest honor bestowed by the Law School. The Medal is named after the Reverend John B. Creedon, S.J. who was instrumental in founding the Law School in 1929 and whose dedication to academic excellence and professionalism was the inspiration for the Founder's Medal. Recipients of the Founder's Medal embody the traditions of professionalism, scholarship and service which the Law School seeks to instill in its students."
The decision to award the Founder's Medal to Mukasey requires an inspection of his career and service, including a look into his stance on waterboarding. I do not know how the decision to award the Founder's Medal to Mukasey came to be, but the end result does push me to question whatever process was used to make such a determination and how this reflects the goals and ideals of the law school.
From the Washington Post editorial page today:
THERE WAS one overarching takeaway from Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey's testimony yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee: When it comes to waterboarding and other extreme interrogation techniques, the ends justify the means.
Mr. Mukasey testified that, when evaluating the legality of an interrogation technique, the government had to weigh "the heinousness of doing it, the cruelty of doing it balanced against the value . . . of what information you might get." For example, he agreed that the use of waterboarding would "shock the conscience" and be impermissible if it were used to pry information "that wouldn't save lives." But it could pass legal muster if used to prevent imminent harm.
Mr. Mukasey's analysis is as flawed as it is disturbing. Waterboarding, which is not currently authorized under the CIA's special interrogation program, has long and unequivocally been considered torture, and therefore illegal, under international law and U.S. statutes. The United States prosecuted its own soldiers for using the technique as long ago as the Spanish-American War. As recently as 2005, Congress passed the McCain amendment to prevent just such treatment. And in 2006 the Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions apply to all detainees, including suspected al-Qaeda operatives, and not just members of an organized military force.
The Bush administration's use of torture and continued use of extreme interrogation techniques have done untold damage to the moral standing of the United States. These practices have also unnecessarily increased the risk that U.S. soldiers and personnel could be subjected to such treatment at the hands of enemy forces. Having the attorney general state flatly that the technique is illegal could help the country begin to rehabilitate its image in the eyes of the world.
Instead, Mr. Mukasey mimicked his predecessor, former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales. Asked during his 2005 confirmation hearing about the legality of a litany of abusive interrogation techniques, Mr. Gonzales concluded that "some might . . . be permissible in certain circumstances." Both men could have come to their separate conclusions honestly. But neither man could have ignored the possibility that if they'd reached the opposite conclusion they would have found themselves in the awkward position of deciding whether members of the administration broke the law.
At one point during yesterday's appearance, Mr. Mukasey suggested that current laws governing torture were vague, allowing for competing interpretations. Congress should seize on this statement as an invitation to close any loopholes once and for all. Lawmakers should aggressively press forward to outlaw all forms of abusive interrogation, including extended sleep deprivation, which the administration has not forbidden the CIA to use. A bill to force all U.S. interrogators to abide by the Army Field Manual, which forbids all abusive treatment, languished during the past session of Congress; lawmakers should redouble their efforts to pass this legislation.
Students and Faculty,
It is inspiring to read that many of you have expressed your opinions, frustrations, and distress over Dean Garvey's decision to invite Mr. Mukasey to be our 2008 commencement speaker and to bestow upon him the school's highest honor, the Founders' Medal. Let us remember that Dean Garvey's decision--for as far as I understand it virtually no one but Dean Garvey had a say in the matter--implicitly suggests that Boston College Law School, as a Jesuit institution, supports Mukasey's equivocation on water-boarding.
I am glad that we are sending a clear message that we do not.
A student expressed concern to me that it's unclear whether Professor Plater's email was approved for distribution by the author. Please rest assured that it has been.
With regard to "torments inflicted on body or mind," please note the position expressed at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) in Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.
"Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator."
For those voting today who care about the waterboarding issue, a quick review of where the candidates stand:
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/678617.html