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About the Teach-In

This National Teach-In is a work in progress created by a group of individuals organized as the National Guantánamo Teach-In Steering Committee.  The core of their collaboration is a virtual teach-in which will be simulcast to participating colleges and universities around the country from Seton Hall Law School.  But each participating institution is free to omit or supplement the simulcast to explore whatever issues interest its students and faculty.  The Project will also provide support for as many efforts as possible on participating campus.

 

As for the simulcast Teach-In, the tentative program is below:

 

Session One: Opening Remarks

10:00- 10:45
         Welcome: Mark P. Denbeaux - Professor, Seton Hall Law School
  Introduction: Baher Azmy - Professor, Seton Hall Law School
  Guantánamo: A Primer on the Administrations Detention Policy - Extraordinary Rendition, CIA & Military Detention, and Military Commissions: Joseph Margulies, Esq.- Clinical Professor, Northwestern University School of Law & Author, GUANTÁNAMO AND THE ABUSE OF PRESIDENTIAL POWER
 
Session Two: Journalists Look Behind the Wire

10:45-12:00
  Moderator: Jack Hit, The New York Times & Harper's Magazine
         Jane Mayer - Journalist, New Yorker
  Carol Rosenberg - Journalist, Miami Herald
  Adam Zagorin - Journalist, Time Magazine
 
Three renowned journalists will reflect on the significance of the administration’s detention policy. Moderated by Jack Hitt, an experienced journalist and lecturer, Ms. Mayer, Ms. Rosenberg and Mr. Zagorin will focus on the ethical and legal problems facing the media. The ethical issues focus on the question of how much to publish and how much to withhold. For instance, should the press publish news-worthy but classified documents revealing the manner in which detainees are treated during interrogation? On the other hand, should the press withhold non-classified news-worthy information because revelation might lead to inflammatory responses? Adam Zagorin will describe Time’s efforts to deal with this problem, and the other two panelists bring their own unique perspectives to bear on this and related issues. Jane Mayer has written extensively on the administration’s detention policy, and Carol Rosenberg has covered Camp Delta longer than any other print journalist. All three panelists will also confront the difficulties of writing about facilities they are not permitted to visit, such as Bagram, Afghanistan, which now holds more prisoners than Guantánamo.
 
Habeas Interlude: Force Feeding

12:00-12:15
  Julia Tarver Mason, Esq. - Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, LLP
 
Session Three: First, Do No Harm: Medical Professionals and Guantánamo

12:15-1:30
  Moderator: Brigadier General (Ret.) Dr. Stephen Xenakis, M.D.
  Leonard Rubenstein - Physicians for Human Rights
  Gerald Koocher, Ph.D. - President, American Psychological Association
  Jonathan Marks - Professor Pennsylvania State University
 
Military physicians at Guantánamo have two very different functions: the traditional role of treating those detained, and the nontraditional role of assisting the administration in obtaining information from the detainees through interrogations. Physicians for Human Rights authored a critically important white paper on the psychological impact of coercive interrogation techniques in the war on terror, and its Executive Director, Leonard Rubenstein, has been outspoken about the role of doctors and mental health professionals at Guantánamo. By contrast, the American Psychological Association has been more receptive to the administration’s arguments, and the President of the APA, Dr. Gerald Koocher, will well represent its views. The third panelist, Jonathan Marks, is a barrister who has written and spoken widely on the role of physicians in the war on terror. The three promise a lively discussion about the proper role of physicians (and related mental health professionals) in designing and supervising interrogations, participating in forced feeding of prisoners during a hunger strike, and intervening if interrogations become abusive. Gen. Stephen Xenakis will moderate the panel, drawing on his personal experience as a military doctor.
 
Habeas Interlude: Insults to Religion

1:30-1:45
  Thomas Wilner, Esq - Shearman & Sterling
 
Concurrent Sessions Four & Five  
  Session Four: Matters of Faith: Guantánamo and Religious Communities (Concurrent Sessions)

1:45-2:45
  Moderator: Ingrid Mattson, Ph.D., Professor of Islamic Studies & Director of Islamic Chaplaincy, Hartford Seminary
  Captain James Yee - Author: FOR GOD AND COUNTRY
  Rev. George Hunsinger - Professor, Princeton Theological Seminary
  Rabbi Michael Feinberg - Executive Director, Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition
 
There is a deepening conviction in the Muslim and Arab worlds that the war on terror is actually a war on Islam. Despite the administration’s consistent denial of such a policy, this perception is fueled by continuing reports of interrogators using religious and cultural humiliation as an interrogation technique. At the same time, Islamic extremists use (or misuse) the Qur’an to incite anti-American sentiment. The three panelists explore these issues from a faith perspective, illuminated particularly by Captain Yee’s personal experiences with Guantánamo and the failure of the rule of law there. Given the unprecedented role of religion in this conflict, religious communities may have a particular obligation to bear witness against the administration's detention policy.
 
  Habeas Interlude: Suicide

2:45-3:00
  Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, Esq.- Dorsey & Whitney
 
  Session Five: American Detention Policy: The Next Frontier (Concurrent Sessions)

1:45-3:00
  Moderator: Jonathan Hafetz, Esq. - Brennan Center for Justice, NYU Law School
  Gitanjali Gutierrez, Esq. - Center for Constitutional Rights
  John Sifton - Human Rights Watch
  Margaret Satterthwaite - Professor, NYU School of Law
 
Rasul v. Bush rejected the administration’s core legal argument that the prisoners in Cuba could be held indefinitely without legal process. But while Rasul altered the law, it has yet to change the administration’s practices. Long before the decision, Guantánamo ceased regularly accepting new detainees, and facilities such as Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan began to grow. Although President Bush has revived the use of Guantánamo by transferring 14 prisoners there for projected trials by military commission, other detention centers remain. Bagram now has some 500 prisoners, and additional individuals are held at forward operating bases throughout Afghanistan. Further, “extraordinary rendition” continues unabated, and the administration shows no sign of closing the “black sites”used by the CIA. In light of these realities, how should the bar respond to the second-generation of post-9/11 detention centers? John Sifton, of Human Rights Watch, is an authority on CIA secret prisons and detention facilities in Afghanistan; Margaret Satterthwaite is one of the leading authorities on extraordinary rendition; and Gitanjali Gutierrez is an attorney with CCR, litigating post-9/11 detainee rights cases. The moderator of this panel, Jonathan Hafetz, with the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, is writing a book to be published by NYU press on the post-9/11 global detention system.
 
Session Six: History of Torture in the Modern World

3:00-4:15
  Moderator: Joseph Margulies
  John Conroy - Journalist, Chicago Reader, & Author: UNSPEAKABLE ACTS, ORDINARY PEOPLE: THE DYNAMICS OF TORTURE
  Alfred McCoy - Professor, University of Wisconsin & Author: A QUESTION OF TORTURE: CIA INTERROGATION FROM THE COLD WAR TO THE WAR ON TERROR
  Walter Pincus - Journalist, Washington Post
  Craig Haney - Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz
  Western Democracies have long confronted the threat of trans-national terrorism. Our panelists will bring formidable knowledge of how government responses to terrorism bear on the nation’s reaction to what is now called “asymmetric warfare.” John Conroy, a Chicago journalist, is the author of Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People, which compares torture by counter-intelligence agents in Israel and Northern Ireland to torture by Chicago police. Walter Pincus a senior journalist with the Washington Post who has covered intelligence and national security issues for decades; he has written widely on the CIA’s secret KUBARK Manual used to train its operatives in coercive counter-intelligence interrogations during the Cold War. Professor Alfred McCoy is the author of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror, which traces the use of interrogation techniques during the last half-century. Finally, Professor Craig Haney is uniquely qualified to analyze the “bad apple” defense, the standard response when things go awry in prisons such as Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib. Professor Haney was a designer of the famous Stanford prison study in 1970, which manifests disturbing similarities to events at Abu Ghraib.
 
 
Habeas Interlude: Innocents at Guantánamo

4:15-4:30
  Baher Azmy, Professor, Seton Hall University School of Law
 
Session Seven: The Military and the Commander in Chief

4:30-5:45
  Moderator, Ronald W. Meister, Esq. - partner at Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C., New York City
  Rear Adm. Donald Guter (Ret.) - Dean Duquesne Law School
  Commander Charles Swift - Counsel, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
  Colonel Dwight H. Sullivan - USMC, Chief Military Defense Counsel, Military Commissions
 
Few principles are more deeply engrained in American society than the notion of civilian control over the armed forces. Senior military planners in the Pentagon, as well as the top officials at the State Department, urged the administration to honor the Geneva Conventions and not to endorse aggressive interrogations in the war on terror. What is the ethical obligation of military officers in this context? This lively panel includes Dean Donald Guter, former JAG for the Navy and who worked in the Pentagon on 9/11; Lieutenant-Commander Charles Swift, one of the lawyers for Mr. Hamdan in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld; and Col. Dwight Sullivan, Chief Military Defense Counsel for the Military Commissions. It will be moderated by Ronald W. Meister, former Military Judge, United States Navy.
 
Habeas Interlude: Voices of Guantánamo

5:45-6:00
  Brent Mickum, Esq. - Keller & Heckman
 
Closing: Guantánamo and American Foreign Relations

6:00-7:00
  William H. Taft, IV, Esq. - Former Legal Adviser, United States Department of State, Of Counsel, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP
 
Epilogue: Poetry from Guantánamo
  Read by: Marc Falkoff, Professor, Northern Illinois University College of Law



 

  
 

Annotated Program (.pdf)

Technology Information

Bibliography

  
 
 		  
 
 
 
 
 
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