increasingly hostile atmosphere against the military or on the campus. didn t they express that to you? senator sessions, as i said to senator lay he, i tried in every way i could throughout this process to make clear to all of you are students, not just to the veterans, all of our students, how much i valued their service and what an incredible contribution i thought they made to the school. i don t deny that you value the military, i really don t, but i do believe that the actions you took helped create a climate that was not healthy toward the military on campus. but let me ask you this. you keep referring in your e-mails and all to the military policy. isn t it a fact that the policy was not the military policy but a law passed by the congress of the united states. those soldiers may have come back from iraq or afghanistan. they were appearing to recruit on your campus were simply
following the policy of the united states congress effectuated by law, not their idea, and that you were taking steps to treat them in a second class way, not give them the same equal access because you deeply opposed that policy? why wouldn t you complain to congress and not to the dutiful men and women who put their lives on the line for america every day? senator sessions, you are, of course, right, that the solomon is law passed by congress. we never suggested that any members of the military should be criticized in any way for this. quite to the contrary. i tried to make clear in everything i did how much i honored everybody who was associated with the military on the harvard law school campus. all that i was trying to do was to ensure that harvard law
policy. the dean remains opposed. senator sessions, larry summers and i always worked cooperatively on this policy. i didn t ever do ig that he didn t know about and he never did thag i didn t approve of. with respect to the decision that you re talking about, this was a joint decision that larry and i made that because dod thought that what we were doing was inappropriate, we should, in fact, reverse what we had done. that period lasted for a period of a few months in my six-year deanship, and long before the supreme court issued its ruling in the fair versus rumsfeld case, we were doing exactly what dod asked us to do. so it s your testimony that the decision you made immediately after the third circuit opinion, you concluded was inappropriate, you and president summers and you
especially the top republican and democrat. one thing i want to mention that i found terroristing on the issue of don t ask don t tell is that jeff sessions just after that sound bite asked whether or not they opposes the policy. she says, i do oppose it now and i did oppose it then. she doesn t have a choice because she nad clear back when she was a dean of harvard law school. she said, i consider it a profound wrong. she repeated it again here. i thought it was an interesting thing, and i wonder what the lawyers there think about someone who was up for the supreme court to be that definitive once again about a matter of policy that will be once again and is currently before the united states congress. dana bash in the room. we need to take a quick break. we will let the lawyers explain their views and see if the
first sign of significant controversy emerging at the confirmation hearings fof elena kagan. jeff sessions boring in on a controversy over the policy when she was dean at the harvard law school. the military for a short period of time not allowed to recruit directly on campus because the campus had an anti-dwis krim nation policy and the military had the don t ask don t tell policy about homosexuals not serving opening. jeff sessions doesn t buy her answer when she says she did everything she could. he doesn t buy it. it s true, and i suppose it s to kagan s advantage it is a complex story that changed over time. there was a lawsuit filed. the people challenging the don t ask don t tell law which took away funds from schools which wouldn t let the military recruit, her side won in the third circuit court of appeals