4/20/2007 11:20:48 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time 

 

Collegiate Times
February 15th, 2006
Nicholas Kiersey, guest columnist

http://collegiatetimes.com/print.php?a=6486

This January, the University Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Mark McNamee sent a letter to over 30 Virginia Tech professors and instructors. His letter replied to several points made by these faculty members in an open letter they had published in the Collegiate Times late last fall.

Written in the wake of recent revelations in the Washington Post and elsewhere about the CIA's use of illegal torture techniques, the faculty letter had expressed concerns about Virginia Tech's continued policy of allowing CIA recruitment on campus.

It cited reports in the Post that the CIA has set up a covert network of secret prisons and interrogation centers, known as "black sites," in several countries around the world, including several democracies in Eastern Europe and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Prisoners at these facilities, the letter noted, are held indefinitely and often in isolation, without due process of the law. Moreover, CIA interrogators working at these sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques."

One of these techniques, "waterboarding," is intended to induce in prisoners the idea that they are drowning. It is a terrifying and dangerous practice explicitly prohibited by both U.N. convention and by U.S. military law.

Addressed to both McNamee and President Steger, the original faculty letter suggested these actions not only contravened international law but also undermined the credibility of the university's commitment to its much-vaunted "Principles of Community."

The faculty letter demanded that the university recognize that by continuing its policy of allowing the CIA to recruit on campus, it exposed itself to accusations of complicity with these terrible practices. McNamee's reply was nothing short of stunning. Avoiding a public response, as might have been expected given that the letter he received had been published in the pages of this very newspaper, McNamee proceeded to explain his view that the CIA is a defender of American "freedoms," and that the best way to reform the CIA was to ensure that as many Hokies as possible obtain employment within it.

McNamee is of course to be applauded for his exemplary faith in the values of our Hokie graduates. However, he is naive if he thinks that this is simply a question of the caliber of the CIA's individual employees.

The torture techniques that the CIA is reported to have used cannot, unfortunately, be reduced to the poor judgment of the agents involved, as the White House has argued is the case with the revelations of military torture at Abu Ghraib.

Far from being a case of a "few bad apples," the CIA's efforts in this instance are a fundamental part of the Bush administration's "War on Terror" strategy.

Moreover, considered alongside the CIA's recent policy of "renditioning" suspects without due process of the law and the extensive historical record of CIA interference in the development of democracy overseas, McNamee's claim that the CIA is a defender of freedom is clearly specious.

Yet the most troubling claim of McNamee's letter must surely be his insistence that the university should not feel obliged to ban the CIA from campus "based solely on publicly-reported practices that some find objectionable." Here, by reducing the issue to a debate about whether these practices are distasteful or not, McNamee misses the point completely.

In fact the practices in question are not simply objectionable, they are illegal.

Both the CIA's "black sites" and the suspected practices carried out at them would be illegal if operated within the United States, which is a signatory to the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Importantly, the same is true for the democratic host states in Eastern Europe where some of these sites are located. Moreover, the U.S. Government is obliged by the Geneva Convention, ratified by the United States in 1955, to offer certain minimal protections to any "protected persons" in its custody.

Rightly, McNamee argues that students are free to decide for themselves what sort of career they wish to pursue. Yet we must also recognize that the practices of the CIA stand in contradiction to the values of our academic community. If our commitment to these values is to be credible, then we must demonstrate a willingness to act whenever they are challenged.

Instead of trotting out tired, banal rhetoric about the CIA's role as a defender of freedom of speech and the right of our students to make their own career choices, McNamee needs to address the issue. That is, quite simply, Virginia Tech's continued approval of CIA recruitment on campus constitutes a form of complicity with the use of illegal torture techniques.

Until the day the CIA resolves to cease these terrible practices, there can be no place for it on our campus. Until then, the only question is whether we have the resolve to make a stand for our values. This has gone on long enough. We need to ban the CIA from our campus right now.