Academia

The Door to 204 and the Virginia Tech Massacre

In the collective nightmare of the Virginia Tech massacre, myriad images are seared into our minds. For some, it is the detached and blank expression of the killer, Seung Hui Cho. For others, it is the image of terrified students running past heavily armed police. For me, it is a single door. Indeed, if there is to be a memorial to remember this tragedy, there could be no more poignant or powerful symbol than the bullet-ridden door of Room 204 on the second floor of Norris Hall.
Before April 17, it was the door that led into the classroom of professor Liviu Librescu. For 20 years, students had passed through the doors of Librescu’s classes to learn about engineering from one of the world’s leading aeronautical engineers. Like all academics, his classroom was his special domain, an almost sacred place in the hearts of all academics. It is a place protected from ignorance and intolerance — the enemies of learning. Yet, what makes such rooms special is not the interior but the occupants. The earliest “universities” did not have a conventional campus or building. A university was the collection of faculty and students who’d meet wherever they could find shelter and safety. When a famous teacher such as Plato met with his students, it was often in the open. He and his students would form a circle, and the interior of that circle became a place of learning, a protected space.

Even after universities created the physical protection of campuses, faculty remained the primary protectors of the place of learning. Shutting the school door to ignorance or hatred was an oft-used metaphor. For Librescu, this common metaphor would become a chilling reality.

Saving his students’ lives

About 9 a.m. April 16, when Seung Hui Cho began his shooting spree in Norris Hall, Librescu was in the middle of his solid mechanics class. Panic quickly took hold of the class as students began to scream and turn over desks for shelter. Librescu knew better. He shouted for his students to kick out the window screens and jump for safety as he used his body to block the door. As many as 15 students were saved before the 23-year-old English major was able to overcome the 76-year-old professor by shooting him through the door. Librescu died there in his classroom while most of his students jumped out of the windows to safety.

This was not Librescu’s first encounter with terror. Born in Romania, Librescu was sent to a ghetto holding Jews in World War II and his father was sent to a cruel work camp. He barely escaped the fate of hundreds of thousands of Romanian Jews methodically executed by their government. Now, after surviving the Nazis and later persecution under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, he found himself literally holding back a man bent on methodically killing his students. He would die on Holocaust Remembrance Day, ending a life struggle against homicidal rage that began for him as a boy in the work houses of Romania.

The image of Librescu holding back a killer from entering his class is an image that most academics will never forget. Indeed the next day, when I opened the door to my torts class at George Washington University Law School, I felt an immense sense of pride and gratitude to be a member of the teaching academy. Even before we had walls on our classrooms, generations of academics have protected this special place. When I walked into my first class roughly two decades ago, I can remember the overwhelming feeling that this is my classroom and what occurs here is something of my making. It is a notion that is sometimes lost on non-academics. When a painter or a carpenter creates, he has a painting or a chest that is the physical expression of his skills and his vision. It is a manifestation on some level of himself.

For academics, our most important creative enterprise is non-physical. It is a journey of learning that we take every term with our students, a journey that is truly reciprocal in every way. The classroom may be ours for only an hour a day, but during that time, it is entirely ours. For better or worse, it is what we make of it and the truly great teachers, such as Librescu, can make something, while intangible, last a lifetime.

Liviu Librescu was not the only teacher to die in his classroom that day. French teacher Jocelyne Couture-Nowak of Canada; German teacher Jamie Bishop of Georgia; engineering teacher G.V. Loganathan of India and biomechanics teacher Kevin Granata of Ohio also fell where they taught. (Granata died after pulling 20 students into the safety of his locked office and, with another professor, sought to help others.) These five teachers came from three countries but shared a common bound with their students and their classrooms. They died with 27 gifted students who had come to this place of safety to learn about the world and about their role in it.

The gateway. The door.

This brings me back to that bullet-ridden door. The door of Room 204 became a literal barrier for an academic to shield his class and his students from harm. It stands as a reminder of the struggle and sacrifice that so many have made to preserve our places of learning. On one side was a force of unblinking, unthinking hate. On the other side was a force of unbridled loyalty and, yes, love. Cho had to shoot him through the door to gain entry into Librescu’s class. Yet in the end, Librescu won. He prevailed by showing that there are things and people worth dying for. His students were worth dying for. In the midst of unparalleled carnage, he offered a symbol that transcended fear and found meaning in sacrifice. He died as he lived, teaching his students perhaps the most important lesson of his life.

I expect that Virginia Tech will construct a memorial to replace the makeshift memorial outside Norris Hall. Here is my proposal. Place this door where everyone can see it while walking to and from their classes. Under it, simply put the well-chosen Latin motto of Virginia Tech: Ut Prosim— That I May Serve.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY’s board of contributors.

Columns, Politics

Peter Agre and Al Franken and the Minnesota Senate Race

For those who believe that American democracy is at a crisis point, there is no more vivid example than Minnesota, where comedian Al Franken has launched a full-throated effort to unseat Republican Sen. Norm Coleman. It is fast-food politics at its artery-clogging worst: instant gratification and no nutritional value. Yet, Franken has both personal wealth and a host of wealthy donors at his call — pushing out virtually all competitors. While Minnesota has long prided itself on favoring underdogs, the day may have passed when an idea-rich, cash-poor candidate can secure a major office.
Democracy becomes a noble lie when money bars most citizens from elective office. Candidates must now pony up millions to have a chance for statewide office, creating a type of oligarchy where offices are restricted to a small elite. The closing of politics to most citizens has profound implications for the country. There was a time when politics attracted certifiable geniuses such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Daniel Webster.

The threshold barriers to new voices entering our political process were evident during a recent conversation that I had with Nobel Prize winner Peter Agre. A Minnesota native, Agre revealed his interest in running but said he was told by state politicos that, in opposing Franken, he is a day late and a dollar short — well, $9 million to be specific. That was the amount that he would need to be “credible.” Despite a lack of money, Agre still intends to run as either a Democrat or independent.

Money machines

The $9 million could prove a conservative estimate. The average cost of the 10 most expensive Senate campaigns doubled in four years from $17 million in 2002 to almost $35 million in 2006. The 2008 presidential campaigns have already triggered their own records. In the 2000 Senate race in Minnesota, lawyer Mike Ciresi (who is also running in 2008) put up $5 million of his own money in his losing bid.

To win, a candidate needs buzz and bucks, and Franken — who has raised $1.4 million as mere seed money — has an endless supply of both. He thrilled bored voters by calling Coleman “one of the administration’s leading butt boys.”

Conversely, Agre does not have much to put on the table beyond a Nobel Prize for chemistry and global work on behalf of academic freedom. In today’s politics, that gives him about the same odds as Albert Schweitzer running against Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Of course, brilliance is no guarantee that Agre would make a good senator, and he would have to prove that he could appeal to people beyond Minnesota Mensa members. Nonetheless, there is something fundamentally wrong when a man such as Agre is considered political roadkill. Even in a state that once embraced underdog candidates such as professional wrestler Jesse Ventura (who became governor) and college professor Paul Wellstone (the late U.S. senator), money now confines politics to the ranks of rich personalities and robotic functionaries.

Obviously, money has long played a great role in politics. But the exponential rise in campaign costs belies the popular notion that anyone can become president or senator in this country.

Except for his lack of money, Agre would appear the perfect candidate. Besides instantly doubling the IQ of the Senate, Agre would be the first Nobel Prize winner for science to be elected to Congress. While the Senate has been Nobel-free for more than six decades, he would join three prior senators and one vice president (the president of the Senate) who received Nobel Peace Prizes.

Born in Minnesota and a former Eagle Scout to boot, Agre seems to have walked off the set of A Prairie Home Companion: milking cows in the summer and eating lutefisk in the winter — a vile codfish soaked in lye that only a snow-crazed Norwegian can swallow with success. Part of a large farming and working-class family, Agre went to Theodore Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis (with another student named James Janos — later known as Jesse Ventura). His father was the chairman of the chemistry department at St. Olaf College. Growing up, Linus Pauling — two-time Nobel laureate for chemistry and peace — stayed at their home, unaware that the gangly kid running around would inherit his Nobel Prize 49 years later.

Clear contrast

Agre’s announcement would create a wild contrast for Minnesota voters. On one side, there is Franken, whose contributions to humanity include such books as Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right and Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. On the other side is Agre, who has quietly served medicine and human rights for decades around the world. His published works include scientific breakthroughs credited for having “ushered in a golden age of biochemical, physiological and genetic studies … at the molecular level.”

Agre could present an equally sharp contrast with Coleman on issues such as stem cells. Coleman has often discussed his tragic loss of two children to a rare genetic disorder as shaping his opposition to most stem cell research. Agre’s loss of his 3-month-old daughter, Lydia, to cerebral palsy helped shape his views in favor of such research.

The question is whether Agre will have a chance to make his case. The Man from Mensa could be the ultimate test of whether merit still plays a significant role in U.S. politics or whether money alone dictates our choice of leaders.

Of course, the very notion of a Nobel laureate joining the less-than-cerebral ranks of the U.S. Senate is something too much to hope for. It would be a scene reminiscent of when John F. Kennedy welcomed Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962 and observed, “Never has there been so much collective intelligence in this room, since Jefferson dined here alone.”

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY’s board of contributors.

Lawyering

A lawyer’s guide to fatherhood

Published in June 2007

Fatherhood is the one job that you can get without the slightest degree of experience, knowledge or talent (despite what you may hear to the contrary on Father’s Day). For that reason, when a friend had his first child recently, I quickly rattled off the most important things that I have learned as the father of three boys and a girl: Don’t wear white shirts while changing boys (they consider it a type of canvas); the easiest way to extract material from noses is a hot bath (except for cheese sticks); always check your briefcase for toy guns before entering a courthouse; and always check the children for captive animals before leaving a forest.

But the most important lesson is that all children are born with an innate sense of the law. Indeed, when the Framers spoke of natural rights, they might have hit on the same discovery in their own children. You can actually track your kids’ development by the legal arguments they make. Take it from me, the best way to prepare for parenting is to take a law course at your community college.

Takings. The Constitution prohibits the taking of property without compensation by the government. Within their first two years, all children embrace this principle with a vengeance. Parents learn they must compensate for any item removed: a toy for the car keys; a cracker for the 12-inch butcher knife.

Contracts. By 3, negotiating with kids is like working with little Teamsters on a labor contract. Bring a sandwich truck to the site; it becomes part of the contract. Likewise, once a parent buys a scone at Starbucks or allows cartoons in the morning, it is part of an unwritten but enforceable contract. This develops into a form of collective bargaining with the addition of another sibling: Any benefit to one is instantly an expected benefit to the other. Break the contract and you’ll face work stoppages, unending protests and even sabotage that ranges from spilled milk to items in the trash can.

Cruel and unusual punishment. By 3, children have defined what they view as cruel and unusual punishment. Denials of favorite foods or toys are considered to be measures that “shock the conscience” and require immediate redress.

Privacy. As soon as a child goes through potty training, privacy becomes an increasingly important right — reaching its apex in the teen years. The same parents who spent two years changing them and bathing them must now sequester themselves in a distant room to avoid the “chilling effect” of surveillance.

Equal protection. By 6, all children put themselves in what the Supreme Court calls “a suspect class” — any different treatment based on their identity as a sibling can be enforced only after parents show a compelling reason that they are using “the least restrictive means.” Otherwise, a difference of only 10 minutes in television time is enough to unleash demonstrations reminiscent of the march on Selma.

Due process. By 6, kids will insist on full due process in adjudicating their claims. Major penalties such as loss of Game Boys require something close to a full trial with two days of arraignment, jury selection and sequestration — and inexhaustible appeals.

Free speech. By 10, children have developed an almost unlimited expectation of free speech. Indeed, since they have now concluded that your views are worthless and out of date, it increases the necessity of your listening to them. Parents are forced to change their content-based regulations from the toddler years to “time, place and manner” restrictions for teens.

Free association. When you object to a boyfriend with more body-pierced metal than a tank, your child will discover the right to association. With the acquisition of a learner’s permit, she will add a claim of free travel (which also involves your car).

The final years of adolescence are filled with conflicts over search-and-seizure rules and the monitoring of electronic communications without probable cause. Of course, by the time your child reaches the late teenage years, you have become the Alberto Gonzales of parents: continual surveillance, spontaneous searches, detention without appeal. You can then wait for your little litigators to become parents in their own right. It is then that you can undermine their authority by plying their children with unlimited sugar-based products and allowing them to live as anarchists under your roof. Your children will then learn the meaning of James Madison’s observation that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.”