September 27, 2018

To Senator Ben Sasse,

If you sign the petition and are not Harvard-Radcliffe Class of 1994, please note your affiliation in your signature or the comment section.

We write today as your fellow Harvard Class of 1994 alumni regarding the confirmation hearings of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States.  We urge you, in your position on the Senate Judiciary Committee, to vote against Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination, and the media circus that now surrounds it, demonstrates part of the emergency for democratic life and for the future of our country. Even if you put aside today’s testimony from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, if you vote in support Judge Kavanaugh, it is a political choice about the meaning of the constitution and our vision of democracy; a choice that will have real consequences for real people. Judge Kavanaugh is a threat to the most vulnerable and he even presents a threat to many of us and our families, despite the privilege bestowed by our education.

According to a petition signed by alumni of Judge Kavanaugh's alma mater, Yale Law School, the petitioners “see in [Kavanaugh’s] rulings an intellectually and morally bankrupt ideologue intent on rolling back our rights... Judge Kavanaugh’s resume is certainly marked by prestige, groomed for exactly this nomination. But degrees and clerkships should not be the only, or even the primary, credential for a Supreme Court appointment. A commitment to law and justice is.”

In your book, The Vanishing American Adult, you author a fictitious commencement speech that you imagine Theodore Roosevelt would deliver to a high school graduating class.  In this speech you, as Roosevelt, state not only that “America requires strong men and women,” but also that Roosevelt was “an outspoken supporter of women’s suffrage,” and that “legal equality is a given.”  You, as an imagined Roosevelt, also reflect on modern masculinity stating:

America has a right to expect that our boys will turn out to be good men.  In my experience, the chances are strong that one won’t be much of a man unless he was first a good deal of a boy.  He must not be a coward or a weakling, a bully, a shirk, or a prig. - The Vanishing American Adult, 2017 (p. 271)

Senator Sasse, now is the time for your fair-mindedness and moral courage.  Follow your own advice in terms of what it means to turn out to be a “good man.” Rather than being “a coward or a weakling, a bully, a shirk, or a prig,” as an elected official, we urge you to demonstrate the bravery and commitment to the American democratic principles you have so often celebrated on the Senate Judiciary Committee by citing “Schoolhouse Rock” civics.  If you genuinely believe all Americans, your daughters as well as your son, deserve “legal equality,” we urge you to vote against Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Signed,