Impeach? 'Yes' answers majority at Pre-Law Society's panel discussion

Panelists at the Pre-Law Society's symposium on "The Clinton Controversy" in Uris Hall Auditorium Oct. 26 are, from left, Jeremy Rabkin, government; Steven Shiffrin, law; Ted Lowi, government; Alan Cohen, mayor of Ithaca; and Risa Lieberwitz, ILR. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

By Linda Myers

The public sentiment may be against impeachment, but on campus it's a different story -- if the audience at a recent panel discussion on the issue is any indication.

During the symposium "The Clinton Controversy: Impeach or Let Go?" Monday, Oct. 26, Ted Lowi put his own spin on the question, declaring: "Impeach and let go!

"There's no turning back now," said Lowi, Cornell's John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions. "Impeachment" -- meaning a trial, but not necessarily a conviction, of President Clinton by the Senate -- "is the only proper way to hold the president accountable for his actions," he said.

Lowi was one of four faculty speakers, and one of three who saw an impeachment trial for the president as a positive action -- although he did not believe the president would or should be removed from office. The event, which was sponsored by the Pre-Law Society, a student organization, drew about 250 people to Uris Auditorium.

Fifty-four percent of those surveyed in the mostly student audience agreed that Clinton wouldn't be removed from office, but 52 percent said he should be. Co-organizer Shawn McDonald '99, who tallied the 138 cards filled out by audience members, said the survey revealed "most students think the president was wrong and he should be removed from office, but they don't have confidence that the system will do that."

Students cheered and applauded government Professor Jeremy Rabkin when he chastised Clinton for "lying and digging up dirt on opponents." Rabkin, who is adviser to the Cornell Review, a politically conservative student tabloid, commented: "Nixon was impeached for lying. It cuts both ways. If we didn't impeach, we'd be giving a message that that is okay."

Steven Shiffrin, a Cornell law professor and self-styled "radical liberal" from the other end of the political spectrum, agreed that Clinton had disgraced the office of the presidency and should be removed. "He asked [his secretary Betty] Currie to lie for him. It's obstruction of justice if he tampers with a witness." Shiffrin admitted he had partisan reasons for wanting to see the president dumped. "This is the guy who abandoned his party's commitment to protecting the poor."

Shiffrin was the only panelist to mention that "two-thirds of the American people don't want impeachment."

Risa Lieberwitz dissented from her colleagues. An associate professor of collective bargaining in Cornell's ILR School and an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board, Lieberwitz took a high moral stance, like Rabkin. But it was independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr, not Clinton, whom she faulted for the "moral breach" of disclosing information about the president's behavior that should not have been disclosed. Calling Starr "a sexual inquisitor" and likening his actions to Sen. Joseph McCarthy's in the early 1950s, she asserted: "Starr had the legal authority to obtain the information but no entitlement to it. There was no sexual harassment."

Lieberwitz called Nixon's behavior a public moral breach but Clinton's a private one "that does not constitute high crimes and misdemeanors."

Moderating the discussion was Ithaca mayor and Cornell alumnus Alan Cohen '81.

"The chemistry between the speakers was absolutely wonderful," said ILR student Alissa Grad '00, president of the Pre-Law Society and an event co-organizer. "They played off one another and afforded different perspectives."

The large turnout for the debate, a follow-up to one in April, was gratifying to Grad, who estimated that 25 percent of Cornell's undergraduates are pre-law. "Cornell students have a reputation for being uninvolved with politics, but this showed that's not true," she said.