protests at uc berkeley's law school graduation

Today at UC Berkeley, protesters picketed the Boalt Hall graduation, demanding that the law school fire Professor John Yoo (boooo!) for his reported authorship of the Bush administration's policies on torture: Protests at UC Berkeley law school graduation. Yoo was not at the graduation ceremony.

Yoo, a tenured constitutional law professor at Boalt, took a leave of absence from 2001 to 2003 to work for the U.S. Department of Justice. During that time, he wrote what critics call the "torture memos," which protesters say outlined the legal basis for the use of torture at the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay military prisons.

The protesters staged a rather elaborate display to make their point, wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods, emulating the infamous photos of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Two protesters knelt in a cage meant to resemble a prison cell, with another dressed in camouflage fatigues and holding a cardboard rifle, standing guard.

They did not, however, disrupt the actual graduation ceremony. According to the article, "Once the graduation ceremonies started, at 9 a.m., the faux prisoners left their cage and went for coffee." That's good to know.