Nashville, Tenn. - Members of the Tennessee Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and other community activists protested today against Belmont University’s hiring of Alberto Gonzales – one of the chief architects of the Bush Administration’s torture policies – as a professor at Belmont’s new law school.

The protest took place in front of the main entrance to Belmont University in Nashville.

As White House Counsel under George W. Bush, Gonzales promoted key policies that led to “waterboarding” and other forms of torture and abuse of detainees in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  In one January 2002 memo, Gonzales advised Bush that protections for prisoners enshrined in the international Geneva Conventions were “obsolete” and “quaint.”

Protestors condemned Belmont’s decision to honor Gonzales as its Doyle Rogers “Distinguished” Chair of Law and a professor of Constitutional Law at the fledgling law school.

“Belmont’s decision to hire Alberto Gonzales as a law professor is a disgrace to the University and an embarrassment for Tennessee,” stated Will York, a member of the National Lawyers Guild in Nashville.  “The decisions by Gonzales and others in the Bush Administration to authorize torture for detainees represented an intolerable violation of human rights and a stain on the nation’s reputation.”

Activists also confronted Gonzales at the law school – where his class is scheduled at the same time as the demonstration – about the legality and ethics of the “enhanced interrogation” techniques promoted by Gonzales and others in the Bush Administration.