Two of the preeminent academic institutions in the world call the San Francisco Bay Area home. The Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University annually compiles a list of the top 500 universities in the world. In 2007, Stanford University and UC-Berkeley ranked second and third respectively. Very impressive. Both institutions, however, have become havens for war criminals.

Stanford hired former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to teach “world peace” and John Yoo–the lawyer who, while working for Bush’s ‘Justice’ Department, okayed the use of torture by arguing the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply to us anymore–is a professor at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law.

Rigorous debate keeps an academic community vibrant and it’s essential to have a wide range of opinions and ideas at a university. However, one would hope they would draw the line at those who have condoned and authorized torture and extraordinary renditions. By hiring these men, by giving them an office and salary and classroom in which to pontificate, the University of California-Berkeley and Stanford University have tacitly condoned these practices.

The United States tortures its prisoners of war. The United States kidnaps men in the middle of the night and disappears them to secret prisons where they’re left to rot, clueless as to where they went or why. The government, despite all appearances to the contrary, is still ours, it’s still a government of the people and by the people and for the people. None of us, none of us, can pretend to be innocent anymore. Especially the institutions housing these two traitors.