RUTHFULLY YOURS

• “But it is not the military’s policy. It is the policy of the U.S. Government, based on legislation passed in 1993 by (a Democratic) Congress, signed into law and implemented by the Clinton administration, legislation and implementation that are currently continued by a Democratic administration and a Democratic Congress. It is intellectually wrong and morally cowardly to call this the “military’s policy.” Wrong for obvious reasons. Cowardly because it allowed Kagan to go ahead and serve in the Clinton administration that enforced this policy she so detests, and to welcome to Harvard as Dean former members of that administration, as well as Senators and Congressmen who actually voted for the law–which is more than the military recruiters whom Kagan sought to ban did.As Ed Whelan asks, “Instead of taking potshots at military recruiters who were merely complying with the law, did Kagan ever exclude from campus any of the politicians responsible for the law?” (http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/49033/kagans-pragmatism-no-cheap-moral-posturing/ed-whelan ; http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/anti-military-justice)
• Despite her detesting of a policy passed by the Clinton Administration, Kagan served as President Clinton’s Associate White House Counsel and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council between 1995 and 1999. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703880304575236161795328900.html?KEYWORDS=elena+kagan)

• “The United States military is not Procter & Gamble. It is not just another employer. It is the institution whose members risk their lives to protect the country. You can disagree with the policies of the American military; you can even hate them, but you can’t alienate yourself from the institution without, in a certain sense, alienating yourself from the country. Barring the military from campus is a bit like barring the president or even the flag. It’s more than a statement of criticism; it’s a statement of national estrangement.”(http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-04-19/elena-kagans-achilles-heel/)

 

In 2005, Kagan was one of several dozen Harvard faculty members who signed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to reject the Solomon Amendment on First Amendment grounds.

• The U.S. Court of appeals for the Third Circuit deemed the Solomon Amendment unconstitutional in 2005.
  • Yale Law School Dean – and current Legal Adviser to the Obama State Department – Harold Koh immediately banned all military recruitment from campus following the decision. You can see our piece on this travesty here: http://www.aei.org/article/21982
• The Department of Defense appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court Shortly thereafter. Kagan signed an amicus brief on behalf of FAIR (“Forum for Academic and Individual Rights,” the petitioner that initially brought the case against the military.) (See amicus brief here: http://www.law.georgetown.edu/solomon/documents/FAIRamicusHarvard.pdf)

The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment, allowing the federal government to continue to withhold funds from universities that keep military recruiters off campus.

• When delivering the court’s opinion on March 6, 2006, Chief Justice John Roberts decisively argued that the presence of military recruiters on campus did not constitute a violation of the academics’ First Amendment rights:
  • “Nothing about recruiting suggests that law schools agree with any speech by recruiters, and nothing in the Solomon Amendment restricts what the law schools may say about the military’s policies. We have held that high school students can appreciate the difference between speech a school sponsors and speech the school permits because legally required to do so, pursuant to an equal access policy. . . . Surely students have not lost that ability by the time they get to law school.” (Full argument of Chief Justice John Roberts: http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2005/2005_04_1152/opinion; Supreme Court’s written opinion: http://supreme.justia.com/us/547/04-1152/)
• Roberts also delivered a decisively pointed remark castigating the academics’ moral posturing and spinelessness:
  • “The reason [your students] don’t believe you [when you oppose military recruitment] is because you’re willing to take the money. What you’re saying is, ‘This is a message we believe in strongly, but we don’t believe in it to the detriment of $100 million.” (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/july-dec05/recruitment_12-6.html)
• Hoover Institution fellow Peter Berkowitz argues that law professors had unfairly tried to politicize U.S. law, instead of
  • “Certainly law professors who wanted to eliminate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and had respect for democratic politics would not have put the focus on their own contrived deprivations of expression and association, but would have concentrated on the claims of gay and lesbian citizens who wish to put their lives on the line for their country. Such law professors would have educated themselves and made themselves aware that the U.S. armed forces are far and away the most integrated institutions in the nation, indeed, greatly surpassing elite law school faculties and student bodies.” (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/011/959tzkai.asp)

Although Harvard has fought the presence of the U.S. military on its campus, the school has been quite eager to accept funding from the Saudi Arabian monarchy – and look the other way on Saudi Arabia’s despicable record on homosexual and other human rights.

• While the awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision on the Solomon Amendment  Harvard and Georgetown both accepted $20 million donations from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in December 2005. Alwaleed is the same individual who donated millions to 9/11 victims in 2001 only to go on and rip American foreign policy.
  • In the same weeks that Harvard waited for Court’s response to the FAIR appeal, good fortune smiled on the institution with the announcement of a $20 million gift from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, with the expressed purpose, in his own words, to “bridge the gap between East and West, between Christianity and Islam, and between Saudi Arabia and the United States.” The Prince, reputed to be the world’s fifth richest man and chairman of the Riyadh-based Kingdom Holding Co., has been intent on “bridging the gap” for some time now”
  • [Alwaleed] was, it will be remembered, the same individual whose intended $10 million gift to families of 9/11 victims was returned by then-Mayor Giuliani after the Prince off-handedly mentioned that the U.S. had to “reexamine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause . . . Our Palestinian brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of Israelis while the world turns the other cheek.” (http://www.hlrecord.org/2.4462/harvard-s-ethical-dilemmas-1.578902)
• Harvard was simultaneously pursuing the United States military to the highest court in the land, and accepting a large donation from a regime that is one of the world’s worst human rights violators.
  • “… more thorny ethical issue for Harvard is how to justify taking a major gift – and agreeing to set up an entire Middle East research center – from a donor who is a member of the ruling family of a repressive, totalitarian, sexist theocracy. For instance, the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that the Law School could not abide on the part of the military is clearly a useful, and necessary, tactic in Saudi Arabia: in the Prince’s homeland, homosexuality is a capital crime and accused homosexuals have not only been shunned but have been beheaded. Since Sharia law allows punishment for “deviant sexual behavior” that ranges from imprisonment and flogging to death, other cases, including the conviction by a Jeddah court of alleged transvestites, have resulted in thirty-one men suffering 200 lashes each and multi-month prison terms. Four other men in the incident received two years’ imprisonment and 2,000 lashes.” (http://www.hlrecord.org/2.4462/harvard-s-ethical-dilemmas-1.578902)
• Harvard Law School has a history of accepting donations from the Saudi royal family – there are currently three chairs endowed by Saudi Arabia, including one dedicated to the study of Islamic sharia law.
  • According to a 2005 Human Events analysis: “The King Fahd Chair for Islamic Shariah Studies began with a $5 million dollar donation by the Saudi royal family in 1993. Riyadh Daily reported: “The celebration was attended by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi ambassador to the United States, who was received by the Harvard University rector, the dean of law college and the first professor for the King Fahd Chair for Islamic Shariah Studies at Harvard University. In a press statement, Prince Bandar bin Sultan expressed his happiness over the establishment of the King Fahd Chair for Islamic Studies at Harvard University and commended the King’s efforts in supporting Islamic awareness.” Prince Bandar is the same man whose wife allegedly funds terrorism.

The Chair itself is devoted, in the words of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Adjunct Professor of Islamic Legal Studies Frank Vogel, to “dissipat[ing] the ignorance of Islamic law, with its complex history of social, political, and religious change.”

The Bakr M. Binladin Visiting Scholars Fund was created in 1994 by Osama Bin Laden’s brother, who donated at least $1 million in all probability. The fund is designed to bring “visiting scholars” to study law at Harvard; the “scholar” should be a citizen of a predominantly Muslim country.” (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=11161)

The Saudi dictatorship has persistently been one of the most abhorrent persecutors of homosexuals in the world. According to the US State Department, “Homosexual activity is considered to be a criminal offense and those convicted may be sentenced to lashing, prison, or death.”

The State Department’s “2009 Human Rights Report: Saudi Arabia,” released the following examples of human rights violations against homosexuals. The treatment of homosexuals is despicable, with two men recently convicted of “sodomy” and sentenced to 7,000 lashes in 2007:

“Societal Abuses, Discrimination, and Acts of Violence Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity:

Under Shari’a as interpreted in the country, sexual activity between two persons of the same gender is punishable by death or flogging. It is illegal for men “to behave like women” or to wear women’s clothes and vice versa. There were few reports of societal discrimination, physical violence, or harassment based on sexual orientation. There were no organizations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons. There was no official discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing, statelessness, or access to education or health care. Sexual orientation could constitute the basis for harassment, blackmail, or other actions. No such cases were reported.

On June 13, [2009] Riyadh police arrested 67 men from the Philippines for drinking and dressing in women’s clothing at a private party. According to their embassy, police released the men to their employers while charges were being processed.

In 2007 the newspaper Okaz reported the public flogging of two men in the city of Al-Bahah after being found guilty of sodomy. The sentence was 7,000 lashes.