very vocally anti-vietnam. and there are some of us who feel that his was related because he was being told -- we knew he was against it earlier. but he was being told your role is in civil rights, not being anti-war. and i would suggest to all of you young people that you go and get for those who are still around and you can with some of the people in aclu, ada, naa, because they were very much involved in all of these at that time. and then we find that very soon after those protests, the draft

movement became almost eliminated and the present army is primarily voluntary. because parents were not letting their sons go into a war, conflict, that they thoroughly disagreed with. and so they were just boycotting the war itself and that was primarily the kent college operation. that's just my suggestion and memories that i carry with me at age 92. >> i think you're talking about the jackson state shootings which happened about a week or so later.athas been

unfairly overlooked in the aftermath of kent. i know at the annual commemorations at kent -- yeah, two students were killed at jackson. at kent, they always make a point of including jackson state. it's interesting you talked about -- thank you. >> lady in the second row. >> thank you. my first question is to kelly. did oral histories include reactions of faculty for and against progressive reforms, and rosalee, i was looking at your statistics and the number of students enrolled at rutgers didn't seem that many. why do you think that. >> the administration at ku at the upper levels had largely passed away when i started the project with dean taylor, so i was not able to personally talk

with those people. the reaction to her projects was pretty clear in a lot of the written record and certainly you would see sort of gaps. and the chancellor's papers with regard to the keys in 1966, huge sets of files from parents and citizens very, very, very upset with the dean of women. and they were actually linking back to the early '50s senior keys and the dean of women's role. so it was obviously clear that people understood she was pushing this agenda, but, no, i wasn't able to interview any of administrators. i did talk with some of the faculty and i'd be more than glad to visit with you afterwards if you would like to. >> i'd like to respond to your question. thank you so much for asking. there are a few stories going on. so at the time when the protests

occurred, the community surrounding the school is predominantly a community of color. and yet the campus is white. and the faculty is white. at the time of this protest, there were about seven students of color campus. most of whom were men. and if we even looked at the physical location of rutgers newark, there was a fence barricading it away from the community and everybody the way the buildings were constructed because people were thinking of riots at the time would be the only way to enter would be from the inside of campus. and i think that while i -- i think it's important that we keep in mind that we have a lot of work that continues to need to be done. eof is actually benefiting more white students than any students of color. and while the university has a

lot community of outreach, we have marshall brown who was a community activist heading some of these kind of these outreach moments. i think the university needs to encourage students who would be the first people in their families to go to college even the high school graduation rate in newark is very, very low, rather than necessarily just relying on remedial programs for students that can already get in. and i think there's a real class issue that we need to think about. these students need a lot of support, a lot of people are not going qualify for loans and other things to attend rutgers and to pay the tuition that rutgers requires especially when we consider how our world is becoming more urban and global and a lot of students now are international students. who are by default paying full tuition. do not have to be subsidized in any way. so i think we need to keep all

these things in mind. and while i'm certainly being critical, i think it's just asking that we don't forget, that we don't just wear this crown of diversity saying we're the most in the nation without remembering that there is still a lot of work to be done.. >> we have time for one more question. >> my question is for rosalie. i was struck by one of the slides that you showed that said rutgers white oasis. and it made me think of public space. and i wonder what role did the community play, similar to the last one, but what role did the community play and were there tensions because of the amount of public space that the university held in the neighborhood? >> absolutely. that's a great question and i think we see these things with columbia university and pretty much anytime an urban campus is built because in order to create that space, they're essentially knocking down a lot of public

housing and homes of people that have been in the community for a long time. because otherwise you can't really create these sprawling grounds of buildings and residence halls. this is kind of something that's remarkable that i'm sorry i didn't have a chance to talk about in my short presentation. the students were really being mentored by the community activists in newark at the time and these were the same activists that were boycotting umdnj at the time they had a proposal for 25,000 acres and -- for 125 acres, and were talking about the bull dozing of people's homes through urban renewal. these are the same activists boycotting highway construction. and what we know about highway construction in urban space is that it would typically be created through the downtown heart of the city. and these students were being mentored by a lot of the black panthers community, organizers community, activists. and really these people in the community gave the students the tools that they need to press

upon the demands upon what was called the white empire. somebody mentioned vietnam earlier. when i interviewed a lot of these activists, they talked about feeling that this was urban colonialism and they really identified with the third world people's movement. >> i want to thank all of our presenters and all of you in the audience for joining us today and for this wonderful discussion. thank you so much. [ applause ] coming up next, a panel discussion on former president george h.w. bush's legislative accomplishments. it's part of the miller center of public affairs on the 41st president and marks the relieves transcripts from oral interviews conducted with bush administration officials. thank you, professor jones.

it is an honor to be here on this panel with my two favorite professors from my graduate work here at the university of virginia and two professors i'm proud to be able to say are mentors to me. and also it's an honor to be serving on this panel with members of the bush administration and thank to you all of you in the assembly here today and those of you who may be watching in a remote situation. we thank you for your service to our country and we thank you for your participation in this oral history project. so i want to begin with a paper that henry and i have produced for this conference with a reference to governor sununu, the chief of staff for bush 41. he tell us an anecdote in his oral history about when he was governor of new hampshire and that he had appointed at the same time three members of the new hampshire judiciary, including the chief justice of the new hampshire supreme court. and governor sununu went into

this grand room where they were going to swear in these judges and their peoples were there and other people from the bench and the bar. and he said i looked out over the crowd and i realized that all of the three judges i had appointed were rather short of stature, not in reputation, but simply in height. and so governor sununu looked out at the crowd and he said and of course you've probably taller than the governor and be a judge in this state. so he went back to his office and his staff said did you see what happened when you said that. and the governor said, well, yes. everyone was very nice and they laughed at my joke. and the staff said, no, governor, every lawyer in the room ducked down when you said that. and so the governor ended this anecdote in the oral history by saying the point is when you appoint people, of course they fit what you're looking for in terms of discussions and interviews and what they said,

but he ended with this thought. it's so hard to get what you think you're getting. so henry and i are using that anecdote and that line as the theme of our paper today when we talk about the appointment of david sutter in 1990 and clarence thomas in 1991. these two vacancies occurred of course because of retirement from the bench of justin william j. brennan jr. who had been there since 1956. an eisenhower appointee. he suddenly announced his retirement though he was elderly and frail at the time, but he had a slight stroke and his doctors encouraged him to step down. a year later in june of '91, an aging and frail justice thurgood marshall announced his retirement. from the supreme court. obviously african americans saw the marshall seat as the black seat and the long tradition of seats reserved for catholics, jews and geographic constituencies over the court's history. in fact this so-called

representative criterion is only one of the quartet of factors presidents have used to place 112 justices on the u.s. supreme court. the other three which henry has developed in his seminal book justices, presidents and senators, the other three factors he has cited are objective merit, ideological combatability and in some instances personal friendship. so now i will turn to the appointment of david sutter, henry will cover the thomas appointment. thought to be a moderate conservative, and road scholar at oxford, sutter received bush's nomination to the u.s. first circuit court of appeals and began serving there in may have 1990.o 199f 1990. when the brennan seat opened up, sutter's dear friend and mentor from new hampshire lobbied hard for judge sutter to fill the brennan seat. we can't go into all the details about the discussions behind the

scenes, but eventually the list of potential nominees for the brennan seat included kenneth starr and clarence thomas. but eventually that list was winnowed down to david sutter and edith jones. governor sununu's comments in the oral history reveal his nuanced approach to the selection criteria that he considered, including future nominations and a desire on his part to avoid reserving seats for various groups on the high bench. he was of the thought that perhaps justice o'connor would leave soon and he didn't want edith jones to go into that seat for fear of this concept of the women's seat would be developing. he also reports that sutter's lack of a paper trail on federal judicial issues constituted a judicial issues codistinct did it is continuing point in his favor among some members of the president's team as sununu observed we know that work was rejected. that was the environment in which the next supreme court appointment came up for george bush and the president obviously

wanted to make a positive impact on the court and yet at the time really did not want to go through a contentious hearing process on his first supreme court nomination. bush eventually met with sutter who came to the white house to see him and sununu said sutter came in and as usual sutter in his own new hampshire dry charm made the president feel very comfortable. the nomination then went up to the senate and it sailed through as sununu explained. our fellow panelist today also helped to smooth the way on capitol hill. fred has commented in his oral history that one of the things that he did with sutter was he went to all the guys who had been attorneys general of their states when sutter was attorney general in new hampshire to build a body of support among those individuals. fred said that gets you the joseph liebermans of the world or people who had been prosecutors like patrick leahy or people who have had similar career experiences. and then fred added in his oral history, david's a very smart guy and my biggest concern about

his confirmation other than the personal side and how they were going portray him, because sutter was a life long bachelor, there were stories that circulated about that, but his biggest job was to keep david sutter from getting in to intellectual discussion that he shouldn't be getting in to with members of the senate. that was a big challenge with him fred said, but he was smart enough to listen to us and so it all worked out in that regard. indeed it did. despite its democratic majority, the senate judiciary committee then chaired by joe biden voted 13-1 to send the sutter nomination to the floor and david sutter garnered 90 votes to replace brennan and he took his seat on the court for its 1990 term. so with that, i'm going to turn to henry now who is going to talk about the thomas nomination. >> thank you very much. chuck, old friend, great to be on the panel with you.

and as for barbara, she's too generous. that's all i have to say. and i have seven minutes. very generous. in 1990, president bush had appointed clarence thomas, a prominent conservative african-american lawyer in the reagan administration, to the united states court of appeals for the washington, d.c. circuit, a well-known professional stepping stone to the supreme court. a graduate of the college of the holy cross and yale law school, thomas had a compelling up from poverty personal story. he had served as assistant secretary for civil rights in the united states department of education and then as chairman of the united states equal employment opportunity commission. for obvious reasons, thomas secured the top position on the short list to replace justice marshall. ironically, his race almost cost him the nomination. the president did not want to look at it again like it was a woman's seat on the court or a

black seat on the court or a northeast seat on the court reports governor sununu. the president's election team suggested looking at it as a possibility of a hispanic nominee. president bush who was at his summer home responded favorably, "well, look at the hispanic candidates and interview some of them." the chief executive ordered united states fifth circuit court of appeals amelia garza to fly to the district of columbia for an interview, but he seemed even less seasoned than thomas according to attorney general thornburgh. the election team quickly informed the president that judge thomas was the best choice. sununu, thomas and his wife, virginia, headed to the bush compound at walker's point.

the president told thomas at 2:00 i will announce that i will appoint you to the supreme court. now let's go and have some lunch. in proclaiming his choice to replace thurgood marshall, bush argued that the fact that thomas is black has nothing to do with the sense that he is the best qualified at this time. "even i had high doubts if i so extravagantly acclaimed thomas recorded years later. and thornburgh remembered that i kind did have a double take. i think what the president meant, sort of with a wink in the eye, was that this was the best qualified african-american candidate we could find and i think he's right. end quote. fred mcclure recalls that unlike sutter, thomas han't been immersed in the intricacies of the law and you have to work with him on that because he hasn't spent a whole lot of time

studying how the court had dealt with bake error mou reverses madison, or all those dudes because that has not been his life. he has been in a political world. he had a good awareness of the political discussions of the day, but how you connected those with constitutional law issues that the court could be in a position to decide is where we had to spend a lot of time with clarence, end quote. thomas attempted to use the evasion technique that had served justice sutter and other prior nominees so well, also called the ginsburg routine. the senate judiciary committee voted 7-2 in his vote on the nominee and his name headed to the full senate without the committee's endorsement. before the senate could vote, however, the knox's yet

compelling anita hill side show had to be played out. for his part, thomas vehemently putting him through such an ordeal, called the proceedings in his now famous phrase "a high tech lynching of an uppity black man." fred mcclure explains his view of thomas' response, and i quote, clarence is a very religious guy and i think he reached the point when our conversations then and afterwards he kind of shifted to somebody else's hands and responsibility. somebody much higher than either of us. and it was kind of now that i have the chance, i need to say this. and i need to say this because it's the right thing to do and if i don't do what i believe is the right thing to do now when they're attacking my character, which is an unfounded attack on my character, then i'm not living up to those things that i believe in. and if that costs me being on

the supreme court, which i didn't ask for in the first place, then okay. end quote. indeed 11 democrats, 7 from the deep south, joined republicans to confirm the battered candidate 52-48. probably the closest vote in the history of the appointment process. it was certainly the closest vote in the 20th century for a successful candidate. when his wife reported to thomas that he had been confirmed, he replied the disgusted appointee replied whoopty-dee. in reflecting, former attorney general thornburgh concluded some of the people who went to such lengths to discredit clarence thomas turned out to be the same people who supported bill clinton over much more

egregious conduct, so you tell me who is kidding whom here. this is all partisan. end quote. and that is my conclusion. >> henry is going to speak a little bit about now the record of these two judges and particularly tie to our domestic theme for this panel. >> all right. i always do what i'm told. >> i should add, henry flew in last night from italy especially to do this panel, so he said to let you know he's just a tad jet lagged. >> do it in italian, right? >> getting up at a quarter to 4:00, 18 hours with a major event involving two missing passports on the plane, which was a wonderful time. >> i bet they were not your passports. >> well, david souter served ably and conscientiously for 19 years on the a nation's highest tribunal.

list opinions painting clear, elegant language. justice sutter produced only eight majority opinions in his first term on the court, none of which were of major significance. his votes aligned him with the court's conservative bloc, but he had the highest level of agreement 89% with justice sandra day o'connor. they were good friends. in criminal justice cases, he continued his tendency from hi days on the new hampshire courts to side with the government as opposed to defendants, conservatives also hailed suitor's decisive vote which upheld the constitutionality of regulations prohibiting federally funded family planning clinics from discussing abortion with clients. majority in the 1992 case of planned parenthood to uphold roe v wade was reminiscent of the

past. needless to relate, conservatives, particularly members of the pro-life movement were devastated that sutter had not provided the fifth vote to overturn roe v wade. the stealth nominee did not shy away from an escalated war of words with his conservative colleague antonin scalia. a first attempted establishment clause cases suitor began to take the lead on the separation aside, such as in board of education versus the school district, majority opinion, rosenberger versus university of virginia dissenting opinion. thomas remained steadfast in his

jurisprudence. votes and opinions have dedicated originalist conservative posture, including firm commitments to a limited government role such as gonzalez versus carhart, majority vote, statutory construction, determined opposition to racial preference policies inherit in the affirmative action, university of michigan case, dissenting opinion. and resolute of federal principles the united states term limits versus thornton, dissenting opinion. in 2007 he boasted to federalist society. one thing i have demonstrated in 16 years on the supreme court is you can do the job without asking a single question. end quote. >> with that, i'll say a few words of conclusion to draw this to a close. justice sutter's record was summed up.

in his bush 41 oral history. i think sutter was more liberal than those involved in the selection process anticipated. or as governor sununu put it, wit slightly more pitt, to this day, anytime i go to a conservative meeting, 15 people come up to me and hit me with a sutter two by four across the forehead about bush's second supreme court nominee, thornburgh uttered a blandered truism, i think clarence is a solid conservatively oriented vote. president bush's supreme court appointments once on the bench occupied positions closer to the left and right of the spectrum than did their appointing president. sutter's nomination was the direct result of the bork debacle less sons, namely, don't appoint a scholar jurist who boasts opinions to his name. especially to the court swing seat. with his quiet persona, credenti credentials, paper trail and few decisions on hot-button issues on federal litigation, sutter

represented the i pit mi of the stealth nominee. yet his movement away from a conservative state cost record illustrates the hazards of nominating an appointee who possesses federal judicial questions. conversely clarence thomas' ideology was clearly conservative arguably more so than president bush whose republicanism was more new england pragmatism than new right dogma. nevertheless, the president's appointment of justice thomas reflects the long 6 american tradition of representing constituencies on nation's high are theest court both to bolster the legitimacy and court votes from geographic, religious, racial, ethnic and againer groups. the governor has remarked, this is the greatest nightmare or governor has. the politics of names u.s. supreme court justices can derail presidential dreams of finding ideological soul mates

to inhaeb habit the marble temple on capitol hill. >> thank you both. so meticulous has been the planning for this symposium that is the directors and planners insisted that at least one panel in honor of the first lady have a majority of barbaras. [ laughter ] >> they checked and neither henry nor fred was willing to change his name. therefore, they sought out three of the most capable barbaras in the western world. the next barbara, i know very well and have known for a long time.

she studied with the master in congressional research. richard fennel at the university of rochester. she has carried on in his tradition by actually going to capitol hill and finding out how it works. she understands the difference between reform and change and has not only documented, but interpreted correctly, in my judgment, all of the changes that occurred and whether or not they are related to reforms that have been put in place. she is the now emeritus professor. she held a very cushy chair at the university of los angeles. her books are many and you can actually learn something from them.