The selection of a former Bush administration official as commencement speaker at UNC Chapel Hill’s law school has sparked a furor.
Some faculty and students are condemning the selection of Michael Mukasey, who served as U.S. Attorney General from 2007 to earlier this year. A petition is circulating decrying the choice.
The law school's commencement is Sunday, May 10.
Mukasey was a controversial figure from the outset of his time as the nation's top lawyer. During his confirmation hearings in 2007, Mukasey declined to say whether waterboarding, an interrogation technique, amounted to torture.
The petition reads in part: "We believe a commencement speaker should reflect the collective values of the UNC Law community, including compliance with domestic law, international law and basic human rights. By refusing to condemn waterboarding as torture, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey has demonstrated that he does not represent those values."
The commencement speaker slot is a pulpit of sorts, said Travis Packer, a third-year law student. The views of the speaker should be fairly broadly accepted, he said.
“I feel like we’ve endorsed this person,” Packer said. “But I would never give him my endorsement.”
Packer conceded it would be difficult to find a speaker with views that everyone agrees with, and said Mukasey would be a good addition to a law forum, panel or other sort of round-table discussion.
But a commencement speech is different, he said.
“When you invite someone to come and speak, you’re bestowing an honor upon him,” Packer said. “He’s going to come in and give whatever speech he wants, and we’re going to have to take it.”
The UNC Student Bar Association made the selection.The group's president, Matthew Modell, said Friday politics did not factor into his group's decision.
"We suspected some students would not be please simply because he was nominated to the office by President Bush, and I have been told by some students that any conservative would have been unacceptable," Modell said in an e-mail to the News & Observer.
He later added:
"I believe Mr. Mukasey can educate students on the value of public service and hard work. He had to work hard to be successful and that is exactly what he did, eventually attending Columbia for undergrad and Yale Law School.
He is a man who has devoted about 25 years of his adult life to public service and has taught for 15 years, as well as working in private practice. What more should a law school stand for than everything he has stood for in his career?"
Last year, Mukasey drew criticism when he spoke at Boston College’s law school graduation.
Jack Boger, the school's dean, said the student group makes the speaker decision each year and it isn't his role to get involved. He added that the law school has a history of bringing in speakers of all sorts.
"The school really has been open to speakers of a wide variety of views," he said. "They're never accepted by everyone."
