Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

A leading human-rights advocate and a former White House legal adviser spoke to more than 450 people today at The Political Theory Project's Janus Forum Lecture at Brown University.

The topic of discussion: "Are there universal human rights and how far should we go to protect them?"

The speakers, who met each other for the first time today, each delivered 25-minute speeches after which audience members lined up at microphones for questions and, in a few cases, emotional protests to the ideas raised by former Bush administration lawyer John C. Yoo.

Now a professor at the University of California at Berkley, Yoo has was thrown into the public spotlight for his role in helping to draft legal opinions that paved the way for waterboarding of prisoners and other harsh interrogation practices.

Yoo offered what he described as a "cost-benefit" approach to weighing decisions by the government, including those regarding treatment of prisoners during wartime.

Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, argued that certain human rights are inaliable and cannot be taken away by governments, even during wartime.

A police detective escourted Yoo to the Salmon Hall, where a handful of protestors stood outside Salomon Hall holding banners. One read: "People v. John Yoo War Criminal."

 Tags  Brown University

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