Thus, for a brief time, it appeared that American justice was working. But, having witnessed throughout my legal career how fleeting this so-called “justice” really is, and how the American power structure tends to reward those who promote injustice while penalizing those who fight against it, I also wrote that “anyone familiar with American jurisprudence knows that such victories are fleeting in a legal system that labors harder to rationalize injustice than it does to produce justice.”
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| Ward Churchill and Death of Academic Freedom |
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 BREAKING NEWS |
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It appears my statement was prescient: Two significant developments are now underscoring the sociological ramifications of the Churchill/Yoo dichotomy.
First, the world of academia recently embraced another war criminal and torturer when Texas Tech hired Alberto Gonzales—attorney general of the United States under the Bush dictatorship—to teach political science.
This is the same Alberto Gonzales who allegedly used the “Patriot Act” to illegally spy on American citizens; who so zealously sought to continue this spying program that he attempted to dupe his predecessor, a hospitalized and disoriented John Ashcroft, into signing an extension order; who tried, while serving as attorney general, to present a public façade of “morality” while he privately endorsed the use of extraordinary rendition and torture; who answered “I do not recall” at least seventy times when testifying before Congress about the circumstances that led to the politically motivated firings of eight United States Attorneys; who was suspected of committing perjury when the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned him about the illegal spying program; and who resigned in disgrace in 2007.
I hope that others, besides myself, can appreciate the hypocrisy of Yoo and Gonzales teaching law and politics when the foundations of these subjects are the Constitution and Bill of Rights—the very documents they made every effort to destroy.
Second, despite the jury’s finding that Ward Churchill was wrongfully terminated from CU, Denver district court judge Larry J. Naves refused to reinstate Churchill to his professorship position or award him any financial compensation for lost wages.
In reality, such an outcome was predestined. Blaming American foreign policy for spawning acts of terrorism automatically made Churchill a pariah in the eyes of the legal system, just as Malcolm X’s “chickens coming home to roost” statement in the wake of the John F. Kennedy assassination made him an outcast during the early 1960s.
So, despite Judge White’s ruling in the Padilla case, it is a sure bet that Yoo will never have to pay Padilla a penny in damages, largely because of the same specious reasoning used to deny judicial relief to Churchill.
Not surprisingly, CU’s president Bruce Benson lauded Naves for “appropriately applying the law.” But what “law” did Naves actually apply? Obviously the only one that truly matters in the United States: the “law” decreeing that the rich and powerful must always work to protect the interests of the rich and powerful.
To be continued...
Winston Churchill's Prosthetic Teeth Sold for $23,723 at Auction
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