Last Thursday, Tufts held an old fashioned teach-in on the Guantanamo Bay detention center and the ethics of torture and other interrogation practices.
The symposium, which featured high-profile members of both the military and the human rights community, did not end until after midnight on Thursday.
Sherman Teichman, Director of the EPIIC program, organized the event in conjunction with a national program spearheaded by Seton Hall University Law School. A national teach-in was webcast from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from the Seton Hall Campus to other universities around the country.
Tufts' supplement to this event began around 7:30 in the Cabot Intercultural Center and was designed to promote discussion of a "larger amalgam of issues" having to do with constitutional rights, Teichman said in his introduction.
The first speaker was Sabin Willet, a partner at Bingham McCutchen, LLP who is representing detainees pro bono.
His contribution on the same topic at last year's EPIIC symposium during which he challenged Tufts, and EPIIC specifically, to engage the issue, partly inspired the evening.
"We answered the call," Teichman said, acknowledging Willet's role in getting the project underway.
"Just who are these people at Guantanamo Bay?" Willet asked to open his presentation, designed to put the media image of Guantanamo into perspective and balance the "powerful and alarming and largely convincing" rhetoric of government officials by examining the facts.
According to Willet, out of around 450 current detainees who have been held for an average of four and a half years, only 10 have been charged with a crime, and none have yet been convicted.
Beyond that, only five percent of these were captured on the battlefield. The vast majority were rounded up after fighting ended and 86 percent were sold to the US military for a substantial bounty.
While about 200 detainees have been released so far, Willet said, most of them are finding it very difficult to return to their home countries. One of Willet's clients was sent to a U.N. refugee center in Albania.
Robert Roughsedge, a partner at Lawson & Weitzen, LPP and a faculty member at Suffolk University Law School, challenged this mostly negative portrayal of the situation.
Roughsedge was also a former army officer and is currently consulting for the government on counterterrorism matters. He compared the situation of the detainees to that of immigrants who, under U.S. law, can be held without being charged with a crime for extended periods.
He said it was important that people remember that "terrorist" is not a legal or military category and that officials must look to current standards for guidance on this issue.
"[The] most successful lawsuits have been brought by JAG officers appointed by the military," Roughsedge said, again trying to show that the government has been doing its best to work within the law to treat the detainees fairly while ensuring that legitimate enemies are not being released.
Recently retired General Counsel for the United States Navy Alberto Mora brought a more holistic view of the Guantanamo Bay situation.
"This war on terror is not like other wars," Mora said. "This war is distinct and will be remembered because we as a nation conscientiously applied cruelty against captive individuals."
According to Mora, not only was cruelty - the term currently used for interrogation practices short of serious physical torture - applied, our government sought out ways to make this practice legal.
Mora made it very clear that he sees "no moral distinction" between so-called cruelty, which relies more on psychological trauma, than conventional physical forms of torture.
Micahel Posner, president of Human Rights First, also expressed concern over public perception of torture.
He cited a study which found that in 1998, eight television episodes depicted torture of some type, while in 2003 over 200 episodes featured torture. "Recruits are saying they want to be Jack Bauer," said Posner, reminding the audience that it must "be aware of the culture that is helping to shape this debate."
Mora said that he was personally upset by the fact that the use of torture has become such an acceptable topic of conversation in today's political climate, and that so many Americans are of the view that these methods should be used "if doing so could make us safer."
"The cost incurred and the damage created to all we value, including our security, is too high," Mora said, insisting that these practices have hurt the United States' cause immeasurably by "compromising the ideals we are fighting for."
According to Mora, these interrogation policies have made it markedly more difficult to conduct foreign relations and recruit allies abroad.
Many European countries have laws against torture and cruelty, and foreign officials could open themselves to criminal prosecution by cooperating with the U.S. war on terror.
It has also become clear to most people that this war must be won on a political front, not a military one. Mora said that we require "the sharpest possible distinction between our antithetical ideals" to effectively oppose terrorism in the long run.
Posner again echoed Mora's concerns over what has become the new norm of American political values. He said that the current administration has been pushing for less transparency in government, greater invasion of privacy, greater control over non-citizens, and a greater use of cruelty without concern for its consequences.
Ambassador John Shattuck, current Chief Executive Officer of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, said that one way to counter-act these problems is "for [the US] to take the lead in defining terrorism as a crime against humanity," giving it a legal definition that can be made compatible with international law.
Before their presentations, both Mora and Posner were presented with the Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award for their efforts in advancing human rights and resisting the use of torture and cruelty.
Teichman said that work on these types of issues will continue to happen through the newly created Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services (ALLIES) program that will encourage joint projects between Tufts students and their counterparts at military academies.
He also plans to help institutionalize Tufts participation in national mock Senate hearings focusing on national security and civil liberties.
