Nashville’s Belmont University has a new law school, one that opened last summer. It also has a new Distinguished Professor of Law, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The Distinguished Professor is also distinguished by his official endorsement of government torture and kidnapping during his time at the White House and in the Justice Department.
Belmont is a nondenominational Christian institution and, citing their faith, 45 faculty and staff signed an open letter supporting the Constitution and denouncing torture, illegal imprisonment, and indiscriminate and hasty use of the death penalty, all things Alberto Gonzales supported as White House Counsel and Attorney General. The letter does not use Mr. Gonzales’ name; with that description it hardly needs to.
Faculty at Texas Tech, where Mr. Gonzales had access to innocent young undergraduates in 2009, were not so reticent. They also wondered why a man with no teaching experience, a lawyer who called the Geneva Convention “quaint” for prohibiting torture, championed illegal search and seizure, and denied that the Constitution guarantees habeas corpus, was earning over $100,000 for teaching one course. No word on what Distinguished Professor Gonzales will earn at the Belmont U law school.
Now that Alberto Gonzales has a teaching resume, he may be offered other faculty positions. We suggest an appointment as Visiting Lecturer in the dock at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, leading a graduate seminar on war crimes.
More:
“Belmont faculty sign letter aimed at Alberto Gonzales,” Steve Cavendish, Nashville City Paper
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Tags: abduction, Alberto Gonzales, Belmont University, detainees, Gonzales, habeus corpus, higher education, law school, Nashville, torture, war crimes, War on Terror, waterboarding, wiretapping
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