As your colleague at Notre Dame, I respectfully request that you withdraw your nomination to be a U.S. Supreme Court judge. These are extremely divisive times, and as University President Fr. John Jenkins and many others have noted, we need to do everything we can to reduce polarization and divisions. Unfortunately, though you are qualified and admired by many, your nomination has increased and not decreased divisions at this critical moment in our nation’s history. I am therefore asking you to voluntarily withdraw. I recognize that this is a difficult decision for you to make, but I am confident that you will make the right choice given that you, like us, are seeing how your nomination is being used for partisan political purposes and is creating more divisions. While we all have our own views on the upcoming election, we have seen how President Donald Trump has used your nomination and associated Notre Dame with your nomination during a debate in which he displayed in some of the strongest ways his intolerance, prejudice and authoritarian tendencies. We know that you do not want to be associated with these traits, and we suspect that you, like us, are upset that you are being used in this fashion. As we see it, the courageous thing for you to do is to withdraw now and work towards a future where Supreme Court nominations can be considered in the serious way they need to be.
Your colleague,
David Hachen
associate professor of sociology
Oct. 5
