Fox pushes false claim that Kagan banned ROTC from Harvard
Written by Kate Conway
Published
Last night, Sean Hannity repeated the tired old falsehood that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan kicked military recruiters off Harvard Law School's campus during her tenure as dean, and that in doing so she was “in violation of U.S. law.”
Hannity then asked guest Sen. John McCain to opine on Kagan's qualifications.
McCain offered up a new falsehood, replying:
Well, I'll give the process a chance to work its way through. But I am still outraged. You know the members of the ROTC at Harvard had to go to MIT to do their training. Now here's a school -- the Harvard Law School can produce all of our Supreme Court justices, but Harvard will not allow recruiters to help young men and women serve their country in uniform.
As Media Matters Action Network puts it, suggesting that Kagan is to blame for Harvard's ROTC ban is “incredibly dishonest,” since it was instituted in 1969 -- before Kagan's tenth birthday -- and furthermore is not unique to Harvard.
Moreover, Think Progress notes that when Sen. Tom Coburn questioned Kagan about her position on ROTC, she stated explicitly: “My statements and actions defending the Law School's general nondiscrimination policy did not sweep more broadly. The position I took does not entail a view on the exclusion of ROTC from college campuses, and I never expressed a position on the exclusion of ROTC from Harvard.”
Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented that, contrary to Hannity's claims, Kagan consistently followed the law, and students had access to military recruiters throughout her time as dean.