15.4.08

I am in complete agreement with Brian Leiter that John Yoo should not be fired for the implications of his academic work, or his actual political work within the Bush administration:

If Professor Yoo's arguments to "encourage the use of torture" and his "fundamental lack of respect for the rule of law" are the reasons he should be terminated, then he is to be terminated precisely for his "views", views which he has expressed in law reviews, as well as to Bush. Are we really to believe--fifty years after the McCarthyist witch hunts!--that academics should be punished because their bad ideas are then used by bad people to do bad things?

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