Vice President Joe Biden said on Good Morning America today that Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan “was right” to block military recruiters from Harvard Law School.
While serving as the school’s dean, Kagan blocked military recruiters from the campus because of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — which Biden called “a very bad policy.”
Biden was asked, “She’s also raised some eyebrows, of course, well documented, when her time there at Harvard, the way that she banned military recruiters there on campus because of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” rule. I wanna ask you, not to get into that in particular, but I wanna ask you, was she right or wrong in doing that?”
“Well, she was right,” Biden said. “Let me put this quickly in perspective. For 20 years before she came there military recruiters were not allowed on the campus in the same way other recruiters were.”
Then we passed the law called the Solomon Amendment, before she got there saying that, no, no, you had to let military recruiters on. You couldn’t do that. So military recruiters were on. Then in fact what happened was the Third Circuit Court of Appeals said Solomon Amendment’s unconstitutional. She was then dean. She went back to the previous 20-year practice at Harvard, 20+ years. Then the Supreme Court said, ‘Nope, Solomon Amendment saying they have to be allowed on campus is correct. She immediately reinstated them.
“This is not a single bit of anti-military bias,” Biden said. “She does think — and I agree with her — that the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy is a very bad policy.”
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Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) also appeared on Good Morning America, and repeated his criticism of Kagan’s decision, saying it “absolutely was wrong.”
Sessions said Kagan would have to explain the decision on military recruiters during her confirmation hearings.
The Republican also attacked Kagan’s record, saying “her record is very thin, there’s just no doubt about that.”
“This is a weak background, no doubt,” Sessions said.
