from African-American activist attorney Florynce Kennedy at a July 1991 conference of the National Organization for Women in New York City. Referring to the failure of Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork, she said of Thomas, "We're going to 'bork' him." The liberal campaign to defeat the Bork nomination served as a model for liberal interest groups opposing Thomas. Likewise, in view of what had happened to Bork, Thomas' confirmation hearings were also approached as a political campaign by the White House and Senate Republicans. First hearing Public confirmation hearings on the Thomas nomination began on September 10, 1991, and lasted for ten days. The senators' focus as they questioned Thomas and an array of witnesses for and against the nomination was on Thomas' legal views, as expressed in his speeches, writings, and the decisions he had handed down as a federal appeals court judge. Under questioning, Thomas repeatedly asserted that he had not formulated a position on Roe v. Wade, or had any conversations with anyone regarding the issue. At one point in the beginning of the proceedings, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Joe Biden asked Thomas if he believed the Constitution granted any sort of property rights to individuals as described in Richard Epstein's book Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain, which had been published by Harvard University Press in 1985. Biden held the book up for Thomas to see and denounced its contents. In his book, Epstein argues that the government should be regarded with the same respect as any other private entity in a property dispute. The Cato Institute later paraphrased Biden's general line of questioning in the hearing as, "Are you now or have you ever been a libertarian?" Sexual harassment allegations On October 6, 1991, after the conclusion of the confirmation hearings, and while the full Senate was debating whether to give final approval to Thomas' nomination, NPR Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg aired information from a leaked Judiciary Committee/FBI report stating that a former colleague of Thomas, University of Oklahoma law school professor Anita Hill, accused him of making unwelcome sexual comments to her when the two worked together at the Department of Education (ED) and then at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In the same FBI report, Thomas testified that he had once promoted Allyson Duncan over Hill as his chief of staff at the EEOC. It was shortly