Abby Baggini ‘18, Tess McMullin ‘18:
John Yoo is an Episcopal alum, having graduated in ‘85. He is currently a law professor at University of California, Berkeley. Yoo worked at the US Justice Department under the Bush Administration as Deputy Assistant Attorney General. He has authored several books, including most recently, Crisis and Command: The History of Executive Power From George Washington to George W. Bush (Kaplan, 2010); and Taming Globalization: International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order (Oxford, 2012). Yoo is perhaps most famous for his writing of the so-called “Torture Memos,” which legally justified the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, included waterboarding, on terrorism suspects.
Q: What is it like being a conservative on arguably one of the most liberal college campuses in the country?
A: College is really liberal. When students get to college, they are not particularly very conservative or very liberal; they actually tend to hold the political views their parents hold. But I didn’t change. When I got to college and law school, I was pretty much the same that I probably was in high school in terms of political views. I got dropped into a very liberal environment, but I pretty much was conservative when I was in college and law school too. So I find myself used to being surrounded by people I disagree with, which I think makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but I really like it. Berkeley is very liberal, but I see most of our top research universities as being very liberal. I feel I have very different views than a lot of my colleagues, and even sometimes the students, but I’m so used to it. It’s always been that way ever since I went off to college.
Q: What do you think are the benefits of having two different opinions and of being the minority in a majority liberal environment?
A: The reason why I really like it is because I think it is more challenging. If you are in an environment where everyone agrees with you, then I think you get intellectually lazy. You don’t reason and think harder. If you are in an environment where people disagree with you, then you have to defend yourself and your views much more rigorously. You have to really examine why you think what you think. Being a contrarian sometimes is really good. I think it’s also good for everybody else, because if you’re in an environment where everyone agrees with each other, I think you tend to make a lot more mistakes. [College] is much more about you figuring out what you think is the true meaning from the conflict of ideas, and so to have a successful college education, you want to be in an environment where you’re always arguing, questioning, and debating.
Q: Can you speak to the atmosphere in the Justice Department during the Bush administration and in a post-9/11 world?
A: After 9/11, I think the important thing was just the shock of how it hit the government. Nobody really saw it coming….One thing I remember in terms of the atmosphere was just what a shock it was to the system… Foreign affairs was not on the front burner, national security was not on the front minds of most people in the 90s. We didn’t really think we had any serious enemies or competitors, and then all of the sudden the 9/11 attacks happened and we went to war. This kind of war was so different, you know, it wasn’t another country… I think we are still arguing as a country right now over what to do. We’ve had much more disagreement about the policies, but I think that’s partially because the enemy is so different and unique and a kind we have never faced before. I think after 9/11 our policies were fairly successful. There was an eight year period where there was no terrorist attack in the United States. You’ve probably noticed now that we are going through a period now of heightened tempo of terrorist attacks, you know, San Bernardino, Orlando, and New York City. And abroad, Paris and London… I think this is a function of our success in finally defeating ISIS. So, all these ISIS people are scattering, and they’re pouring more of their resources into attacking us in these smaller ways. I think part of it is that we did go eight years without any terrorist attacks, and I think we kind of lifted our foot off the pedal and we took it easier.
Q: In the last few years, do you think we’ve been effective in combating terrorism?
A: I think we did with one kind, but not the other. The worst possible thing is for a terrorist group to take over a country, which is what Afghanistan was at the time of 9/11, and which we saw with ISIS in Syria and Iraq. If they have territory, then they have time to train, they have resources to bring together, and they can operate more easily. I think the number one mission was to stop ISIS and push it out of Syria and Iraq, which is just happening right now as we are talking; they are in the final stages of that. But I think where we took the eye off the ball, maybe because we had to focus on ISIS, is of the Al-Qaeda style terrorism from 9/11, which is not based on controlling territory, but is about creating a network, kind of like a social network. They’re not trying to control territory, but what they want to do is slip people into the United States or get people already here to agree with them, and to carry out terrorist attacks that are lower in destructiveness but more frequent. I think we, for the last few years, didn’t focus on that, but that’s where the attacks are going to come from. It’s a harder thing to do because it’s easier to carry those out. As with ISIS, it’s only abroad and it’s in one place, and they are trying to control territory. It’s actually easier to combat in a way. I think this means that the Trump administration will need to be more aggressive using drones, special forces, and trying to get intelligence in order to bring those networks down.
Q: After you published the briefs about the constitutionality of enhanced interrogation, how has your life changed since you were kind of catapulted into the spotlight?
A: I probably get a lot more invitations to speak and write things that I wouln’t have before. But I also get more criticized than I would have been before, so it comes with a cost and benefits. The topics are all things I’ve always been interested in and studied, so what you’re talking about just kind of raised my profile. It makes you more controversial, but at the same time, it means your views get more dissemination, and I think they can become more influential than if you were just a college professor no one heard of or paid attention to. Some people would rather not have all that attention; I think it’s the price of getting your views out there. A second thing is, I didn’t think about any of this at all when I was doing it. When I was in the government, I didn’t really think about what it would mean for my life after the government, because you know, you were there after 9/11 and you wanted to make the country safe from any future attack and to be able to take the measures necessary to stop Al Qaeda in the future.
Q: What advice would you have for students interested in going into law/politics/government?
A: I think the most important thing to do is to learn how to write properly, with clarity, and analysis. I think Episcopal students will probably be shocked when they learn how little education goes on in college and law school about how to be a good writer. A lot of it happens in high school. [In college] they won’t devote the kind of resources to teaching you those skills that you get here at Episcopal. The second thing is just learning to think critically and rigorously, and how to question things.