Rutgers University Faculty protest honoring war criminal Condi Rice-Who Never Acknowledged Her Lies [View all]

[kpete]

Rutgers University Faculty protest honoring a war criminal with a Doctor of Laws degree


We, the undersigned Rutgers faculty members, are outraged and offended by
the resolution of the Board of Governors to invite former Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice to be the keynote speaker at this year's
Commencement, and to award her an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

The mission of a University is to promote truth and knowledge, including
historical knowledge. A commencement speaker is supposed to represent a
model of citizenship to graduating students. To have Condoleezza Rice
perform this role at Rutgers betrays both our mission and the trust of our
students. It dishonors the Board and all of us.

As National Security Advisor (2001-2005), Dr. Rice directly participated in
the decision to launch the second Iraq war. She played a leading role in
the campaign of distortions and lies seeking to justify that war,
repeatedly alleging that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that
links had been established between al Qaeda and the Saddam Hussein regime.
As Secretary of State (2005-2009), well after these allegations had been
proven false, Dr. Rice never acknowledged that her claims had misled the
country.

Condoleezza Rice was also fully associated with the Bush administration's
torture policy of "enhanced interrogation techniques," such as
waterboarding. Her later statement that she "didn't authorize anything,"
but only "conveyed the authorization of the administration" to the CIA,
merely adds her name to the infamous list of participants in crimes of war
claiming that "they only followed orders."

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