Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has glommed onto a one-year gig at Texas Tech University, where he will help recruit Hispanic students and also will teach an undergraduate political science course called “Contemporary Issues in the Executive Branch.”

It doesn’t pay nearly as much as a former attorney general might expect to earn at a prestigious law firm or lobbying outfit, but it’s better than being a Wal-Mart greeter.

Gonzales, who will receive $100,000 for the one-year appointment, has been bouncing around on the fringes of the retired-cabinet-member universe since resigning as attorney general almost two years ago under intense overt pressure from Democrats and to the unspoken relief of many Republicans. This job, proffered by Tech Chancellor Ken Hance, a fellow Republican loyalist, is a far cry from the prestigious jobs held by most former attorneys general, but Gonzales was a very bad attorney general, and this is probably as good an offer as he is going to get.

Even if he escapes civil and criminal prosecutions for his actions in the Bush administration, Gonzales will still be remembered along with Harry Daugherty and John Mitchell as one of the most reviled attorneys general ever to hold the office.

In his long, faithful but inept service to former President George W. Bush, Gonzales manages to subvert the United States Constitution in any number of ways.

He was one of the first among the faithful to plant the notion into willing ears that torturing enemy combatants in Iraq was constitutionally justified. A memo prepared in his department when he was the president’s legal counsel notoriously referred to some of the provisions of the Geneva Convention as “quaint.”

He ran illegal interference for an administration warrantless wiretapping proposal by rushing to the sickbed of the sitting attorney general and soliciting his assistance, which was — quite correctly — rebuffed.

As attorney general, he undermined the integrity of the Justice Department by carrying out a purge of Republican United States attorneys who were not partisan enough to suit the administration. In defending his actions before Congress, he obfuscated to such a degree that even his supporters feared he had veered off into perjury.

That is not the kind of public resume that tends to get a former cabinet member a prestigious job back in the private sector, so Gonzales will have to make do with this temporary job for the time being.

The appointment has already stirred up controversy, particularly among Texas Tech students and alumni. The comments section on the Web version of The Daily Toreador, Tech’s student newspaper, contained several sarcastic references to the appointment. Some asked if “I can’t recall,” would be included as an option on Gonzales’ multiple-choice tests.

The reaction at Tech is not unlike that at the University of California at Berkeley, where John Yoo, another architect of the Bush administration’s torture policy, is ensconced as a professor at the law school.

We can understand the critics’ outrage, but we do not agree with it. A university should be the one place at which all ideas, good and bad, are debated, and no side of an issue can be fairly represented without an advocate.

We hope that Texas Tech students — those who admire him and those who don’t — will fill Alberto Gonzales’ classroom to the rafters, and pepper him with serious, penetrating questions.

We also hope that Gonzales answers them with candor, but we are not getting our hopes up too high on that one.