An excellent point

A letter to the editor in the Washington Post makes the point that John Yoo--author of the infamous "torture memo" that gave legal sanction to prisoner abuses at the hands of the Bush administration--should not have his actions shielded in the name of academic freedom, because the offending actions were nonacademic and, indeed, nonpublic:

[Yoo] did not write this memo to express an opinion to the public.

On the contrary, he and his colleagues did everything in their power to keep the memo a secret for as long as possible. It was not "speech"; rather, it was a tactical document designed to encourage an activity globally considered to be illegal.

Berkeley should defend absolutely the right of its tenured professors to publish or state publicly any opinion. But when a member of the faculty has demonstrated a complete lack of legal ethics -- which actually and predictably leads to human rights abuses -- that individual is clearly no longer fit to teach the law to future generations of Americans.

I'm still not sure I agree on the merits that Yoo should be fired--in the end, you would still be firing him just for having a particular legal opinion. However, I think this does persuasively show that if you are going to defend him, it can't be because of concerns about academic freedom.