Law Journal Apologizes For Article About Executing Law Professors, Professor Resigns

Insane law review article prompts professor's resignation... but how did he get hired in the first place?

Legal scholarship takes some well-deserved knocks now and then. Fifty pages of detailed analysis of the proto-Peronism of Hammurabi’s Code as seen through a post-structuralist lens are a jolly waste of everyone’s time. Which is why it’s so refreshing when a law review article hits on an important and timely subject: like executing law professors who question the War on Terror.

Professor William C. Bradford, a professor who was — until about half an hour ago — working at the United States Military Academy at West Point, penned a 180-page gem of a manifesto entitled Trahison des Professeurs: The Critical Law of Armed Conflict Academy as an Islamist Fifth Column in the National Security Law Journal. How bats**t crazy was this article? The National Security Law Journal has apologized for ever publishing it!

This past spring the Journal made a mistake in publishing a highly controversial article, Trahison des Professeurs: The Critical Law of Armed Conflict Academy as an Islamist Fifth Column, 3 Nat’l Sec. L.J. 278 (2015), by William C. Bradford, who is currently an assistant professor at the United States Military Academy. As the incoming Editorial Board, we want to address concerns regarding Mr. Bradford’s contention that some scholars in legal academia could be considered as constituting a fifth column in the war against terror; his interpretation is that those scholars could be targeted as unlawful combatants. The substance of Mr. Bradford’s article cannot fairly be considered apart from the egregious breach of professional decorum that it exhibits.

Bradford’s central thesis would make General Buck Turgidson blush — advocating total war upon Islamic holy sites “even if it means great destruction, innumerable enemy casualties, and civilian collateral damage” before turning his ire upon what he sees as the roadblock to the glorious transformation of the Middle East into vitrified glass: lily-livered law professors. Describing a loose-affiliation of law professors as the “Critical Law of Armed Conflict Academy” or “CLOACA,” Bradford thinks it’s high time that we recognize teaching outdated concepts like “The Constitution” and “International Law” are just a front for ISIS:

CLOACA scholarship and advocacy that attenuates U.S. arms and undermines American will are PSYOPs, which are combatant acts. Consequently, if these acts are colorable as propaganda inciting others to war crimes, such acts are prosecutable. CLOACA members are thus combatants who, like all other combatants, can be targeted at any time and place and captured and detained until termination of hostilities. As unlawful combatants for failure to wear the distinctive insignia of a party, CLOACA propagandists are subject to coercive interrogation, trial, and imprisonment. Further, the infrastructure used to create and disseminate CLOACA propaganda — law school facilities, scholars’ home offices, and media outlets where they give interviews — are also lawful targets given the causal connection between the content disseminated and Islamist crimes incited. Shocking and extreme as this option might seem, CLOACA scholars, and the law schools that employ them, are—at least in theory—targetable so long as attacks are proportional, distinguish noncombatants from combatants, employ nonprohibited weapons, and contribute to the defeat of Islamism.

Let’s focus on this sentence, “Further, the infrastructure used to create and disseminate CLOACA propaganda — law school facilities, scholars’ home offices, and media outlets where they give interviews — are also lawful targets.” Yes, he actually thinks SWAT units need to storm the offices of law professors like, specifically, Robert Chesney of the University of Texas. Bear in mind, Chesney thinks drone attacks on Americans are totally cool, so if he’s on Bradford’s hit list who the hell is safe?

Bradford may have resigned, but the more troubling question is how did the Law Department at West Point bring Professor Bradford on board in the first place? Not only is this “scholarship” an embarrassment for an otherwise well-regarded university, but Bradford’s academic career is pock-marked with red flags.

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Professor Bradford became a minor celebrity in conservative circles 10 years ago when he claimed Indiana University MicKinney School of Law in Indianapolis denied him tenure for his patriotism. He was a war hero — having earned a Silver Star in Desert Storm — willing to call out liberals for their lack of commitment to the War on Terror. Bill O’Reilly bloviated about Bradford’s struggle against left-wing academia on his nightly parody of The Colbert Report. Everything was coming up roses for Bradford until increased attention uncovered a web of lies.

Some of Bradford’s deceptions seem obvious. For example, Desert Storm ended in 1991, and Bradford got a Ph.D., a J.D., and an L.L.M. during his supposed years of combat. Other deceptions were less easily penetrated. That’s why it took Ret. Army Lieut. Col. Keith R. Donnelly contacting [Indianapolis Star reporter Ruth] Holladay with his suspicion that Bradford did not win a Silver Star to bring clarity to that issue. Both Donnelly and Holladay independently requested Bradford’s military records. In her column Sunday, Holladay reported that Bradford had seen no active duty, had won no awards, was discharged as a second lieutenant, and was not in the infantry. Bradford had been in the Army Reserve from September 30, 1995, to October 23, 2001, but saw no active duty.

Oops. Frankly, this should be disqualifying for a job at West Point. Stolen valor may be constitutional, but it’s something an American service academy should probably frown upon. And yet this isn’t the only deception in Bradford’s past. Like the disingenuous way he described his “tenure denial” — he hadn’t come up for tenure yet, or his claim that he secured restraining orders against other faculty members at Indiana that turned out to be fabrications.

And the dodgy record isn’t confined to an episode 10 years ago. In Trahison des Professeurs, Bradford identifies himself as “associate professor of law, national security and strategy, National Defense University.” However…

But a representative of the National Defense University said Bradford was a contractor at the prestigious Defense Department-run institution, “never an NDU employee nor an NDU professor”.

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That kind of résumé puffery should not fly at Army. When you walk around West Point, you pass a monument emblazoned with the Cadet Honor Code in all-caps, “A CADET WILL NOT LIE, CHEAT, STEAL, OR TOLERATE THOSE THAT DO.” Perhaps the Law Department needs to reflect on this in light of its recent hiring decisions.

A Message To Our Readers [National Security Law Journal]
West Point professor calls on US military to target legal critics of war on terror [The Guardian]
The National Security Law Journal Outdoes the Onion [Opinio Juris]
Web of Lies [Inside Higher Ed]