I guess everybody has heard now that Texas Tech University is hiring Alberto Gonzales for a year term as a political science professor, teaching a course in "contemporary issues in the executive branch." As a TTU alum, I took it upon myself to write a letter to the president and the chancellor and let them know my thoughts. A copy of the letter is below.
Dear Dr. Hance:
I am astonished and appalled to hear about the hiring of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as a political science professor at Texas Tech University. Because of this hiring decision, I plan to cancel my membership with the TTU Alumni Association, and I will forever feel a pang of shame whenever I tell people I attended Texas Tech University.
The offenses Alberto Gonzales has committed against the Constitution, American democracy, and the human conscience are manifold. The following is a brief and incomplete list of these offenses:
• As senior White House Counsel, he led the administration’s effort to provide secret legal justifications for torturing suspected terrorists. Besides being ineffective at obtaining intelligence, torture is morally reprehensible to anybody with even a shred of humanitarian feeling.
• During his tenure in the Bush administration, he participated in crafting the NSA warrantless wiretapping program, an illegal and terrifying curtailment of all Americans’ civil liberties. After the program was exposed, he lied to Congress about briefings held with congressional leaders. It was obvious that he was being untruthful, which many presume is part of the reason he has had trouble finding a job until now.
• When he was made aware that the Justice Department was investigating the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity, Gonzales improperly informed White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card about it 12 hours before informing the rest of the White House staff that they had to preserve all documents related to the case. This provided the White House the opportunity to destroy evidence, ensuring that the perpetrators of this act of treason could never be brought to justice.
• As Attorney General, he presided over the politicization of the Justice Department, in which U.S. attorneys were hired not for their competence or skill but for their political affiliations.
It is particularly ironic and odious that you have hired Gonzales to teach a course on the executive branch when his actions and legal opinions in the executive branch did so much to undermine the constitutionally prescribed balance of powers. In addition to all of his legally dubious activities in the White House, Gonzales promoted and acted on the theory of the "unitary executive," which is based on a radical interpretation of the Constitution that effectively grants the power of a monarch to the President of the United States. Hiring this man to teach impressionable students about executive power is like hiring David Duke to teach African American studies or hiring Bernie Madoff to teach finance.
I sincerely hope you will retract Gonzales’ job offer. Do it for the future graduates of the Political Science department who will never live down the fact that they graduated from a program that employed one of the most infamous political figures of our time. Do it for the many innocents apprehended in Afghanistan who have been imprisoned and abused without any hope of a day in court. Do it for Texas Tech, whose reputation will be irreparably tarnished by this hiring decision and whose budget will, at the very least, suffer the loss of any future contributions from me.
Sincerely,
[arreay]
I should note, I never actually joined the Alumni Association in the first place, but they don't know that.