Professors David Cole and Viet Dinh Discuss Enemy Aliens

A capacity audience filled the Moot Court Auditorium on September 30 to hear David Cole and Viet Dinh, who are friends as well as professors at the Law Center, debate issues raised in Cole’s new book, Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism, published by the New Press. In June, Dinh had returned to the Law Center faculty after a two-year leave as assistant attorney general for legal policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as the chief architect of the USA Patriot Act. Cole’s book is in part a critique of that law and its impact.

     The speakers were introduced by Associate Dean Alex Aleinikoff, who, with a good-natured smile, suggested Dinh would be a good interlocutor that evening “for some of the outrageous claims that David is about to make here as he defends his book.” For his part, Cole thanked his friend for agreeing to appear, jokingly comparing Dinh’s situation to that of Daniel in the lion’s den. He added that, while Dinh was at the Justice Department, he exhibited a deft “Midas touch” in turning away criticism of the Patriot Act.
     Cole then turned to the substance of his argument in suggesting that the Act was also now coming under increasing criticism for serious threats it posed to civil liberties. He said that the U.S. had squandered the sympathy the world felt toward it after September 11, adding, “There is a greater degree of anti-Americanism than there has ever been in the history of this country.” Acknowledging the apparent need, after September 11, for greater security and protection, he said that nevertheless “we don’t have to sacrifice our liberties to get that protection.” By sacrificing the rightsof immigrants since the attacks, he said, the U.S. had made it more possible to infringe on the rights of others as well. After surveying past often unjust treatment of enemy aliens, Cole concluded that such infringement is also risked through the present-day practice of targeting foreign nationals.
     Dinh defeated any expectation that he might use the occasion to attack Cole’s position. He instead thanked his colleague for his work and for championing basic liberties. Dinh, appearing in his first public forum at the Law Center since his return in June, praised in particular those portions of Enemy Aliens in which the author documents fear-based legislation the U.S. has previously enacted to curtail the rights of groups it perceived as threatening. As to the book’s criticisms of the government’s recent behavior, Dinh acknowledged that the Justice Department had occasionally erred, but added that such mistakes are human and that “the mark of an organization is how it deals with mistakes.”
      Cole, while expressing appreciation of Dinh’s openness to criticism, said he was disappointed in Attorney General Ashcroft’s apparent reluctance to reconsider current policies. Answering a question from the audience, he professed alarm at President Bush’s occasional references to “bad guys” instead of to enemy combatants. Instead of a declared war against a defined enemy, Cole said, the current administration at times seemed to envision the more questionable goal of eliminating “evildoers” from the world.