and with respect to the particular evidence that support in this particular case dr steele has established or has asserted that he believes that when he came to india you as a professor that he was given the position  as a placeholder and he believes this because very soon after starting in the position he received what he believed to be quote questions and concerns about his teaching style and skill and although in the record shows  trying well that is what we've asserted in this record as well as her how have you shown that so particularly with let's use for example professor miller who is a younger employee who in fact was at the university also in the probationary period and this decision which was made to release resulted in only two individuals who were faculty being released and those both of those individuals were over the age of forty and with respect to dr miller who was allowed to remain we believe the record evidence shows that he was not in terms of his skills and abilities in the body that well those reasons as asserted by the agency should have been somewhat considered to remain tell me about i actually want to go back to beginning then the prima case that was asserted here on the fourth prong requires that you show that he was replaced by a substantially younger person yes  was ten years younger so two thirds of them don't qualify and substantially younger only one of them might have and his permanent replacement was i think about the same age forty seven didn't hear the last his permanent replacement was forty seven so how did you even make out the fourth prong of the prima facia case here so with respect to looking at other individuals who were advantage more favorably than d  you were replaced by someone who was just the same age as you that's the end of the prima facia story well it's only is the end of the print of a short story if that is consistent legally with the record of what has been presented so it is true and correct retirement range of species experience and skills of the bill it's a terribly flawed well we don't have to in these particular individual cases look very closely when we're talking about one particular individual as we are in this case being the victim of discriminants let me federal employees it's unlawful for age discrimination to a factor it doesn't have to be the cause of this correct and you're looking for specific damages to be brave and i wonder whether that's because you're look at other things like the pretext that you're arguing and then we put them together but when i went to try to add them together i couldn't understand how you might the fourth prime your prima facie case which i have to analyze any evidence here to see if you've got enough to get coming on board what we've been leave the significant and relevant with respect to those individuals is this determination that these individuals would not proper compared to others with respect to whether or not there was a disadvantage treatment firing him you said you had to get rid of three people for budget reasons but that doesn't explain why you fired him it's a process of elimination or rather the how did you state it what was your legitimate reason for getting rid of him three spots had to be eliminated yes and you had explain why you picked him right rather than the other people explaining their reason was the reason is that they couldn't get rid of people for whom fun they had up and cut so that accounts for  dr who go they did not get rid of dr miller because dr miller was a specialist in afghanistan and pakistan which the joint chiefs told andy you to focus upon and they did not get rid of dr parker who was fifty nine years old because he had skills that were likewise incredibly valuable to him do you in this court should not try to look too deeply into and the use into whether there was an on the awful basis in the pretextual basis for removing someone but at the same time this court is not welcome to evaluate you know particularly in the context of higher educational institution is a particular i get your  i can't for the life of me figure out why when it comes to discrimination cases then we assume or give any extra leashed to those involved in education then we would to those involved in medical care running the military itself actually conducting more of these types of things but i don't understand where that comes from and you are going to want to hurt our our position doesn't hinge upon that your honor but i do think that it is different because professors are not interchangeable the way that for instance a surgeon might of course every surgeon might be a little bit better at the surgery than about surgery but ultimately most faculty members at most educational institutions have a specific focus on a teet had very high reviews and as the record establishes he you know if one is comparing fifty nine year old dr parker with forty seven year old dr steele or four year old dr steel parker was simply have shown himself to be even more valuable to the not no way that he was required to first of all it's a probationary employees so you don't have to give them an explanation where you have to give a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason yes the legitimate nondiscriminatory explanation provided through litigation which is the point at which this becomes he was he was teaching he had a good and economics in the record he also says he was a backer of the engineering and about grounded history those are all relatives and that's why he was initially recruited but at the end of the day a year in the budget situation changed and they had to make some hard decisions and then they recently made the decision that based upon the joint chiefs directive they were going to focus on something like only have a couple of questions about the funding was dr who said that his funding after this you have two people that are problems so it was a very temporary funding problem it's just not really clear how there seems like there was a lot of turnover in that short period of time but actually they actually show that people in their forty's and in their fifty's if you look at those ten year periods they actually increased between twenty eleven and twenty forty based upon that very evidence is this is a point w made in our brief and it's it's based upon the of the records that of the opponents submitted in any event of the people that were going on around about the time that of the doctor still was let go were people again who were focused on south and central asia as opposed to the more generalized category of dr ste says there are continual discussions with the funding organisation there is discussion about l it's being reduced the funding was also going to be reduced for their program after bragg as well as for the program counterterrorism fellowship program she says the funding of the reduced from that so that was what made me think there was some amount of dispute about whether it was secure i should say in jeopardy but the rest of the record your honor i think i see what you're referring to but i also hyphens before that and it seems like that was it's you know i don't believe that this is a particularly clear statement she doesn't finish the sentence it seems that she was interrupted in the event she doesn't i'm just reading this record but in terms of disputes it just struck me that you know right there's there's quite clear evidence of the record that there was a directive from on high d o d that andy you had to get rid of seventeen positions seventeen f t e positions on the research side and they got rid of sizes colors of international a say of of piece of that was going to be three position and they had to come up with three names you know an animist against based upon age and while that waiver was being sought and you know round about the time that the joint chiefs have said go out and really build up your afghanistan pakistan central and south asia focus they started that hiring process and funding specifically for those kinds of positions was located given the joint chiefs emphasis and worse but just because there were some hiring decisions made around the time that the completion of an earlier remove process in order to try to right size the size a generally given the funding limitations that have come to light just because those additional hiring roles were being  was not a factor but i assume you think it's covered by the position that i'm taking which is it was not part of it you know it wasn't a part of it but i do think actually that in the context here if you look at the complaint she's seeking or sorry stand here and say it's a story remark or would you say that's powerful stuff for a charity consider i would say i would go on to provide the rest would you say that half was a stray remark or not people who are directly supervising the individual now but at the end of the day also the as i explained earlier i think it's really the process of elimination approach that gets you to a doctor still has to go because the information to the decision maker and that was held to be sufficient and so what i'm asking is why not plan them all involved yes but not the decision maker and making comments that are directly about preference comments that can't be that you know i mean to say here's somebody here's her role she was in the meetings you know i'm not disputing that she was the ultimate ultimate decision maker there's nothing surprising about that funding was not available i think the record is clear that at the deferred appendix at six twenty five there is this discussion with respect to the counterterrorism funding being cut as well and  handling we believe as can he was hired at forty seven and just ten months later so now he's twenty seven in ten months or something like that firing by them what if it particularly had the opportunity to complete the of these things coming on board not really being as pollak wide in terms of professors with ph d in place teaching experience experienced teaching for example military individuals teaching at military university and so with respect to to the issue of whether or not this was i believe in legally calculated in terms of the reason i think that it very much a reason why he was not considered a good fit and as you'll know from this record he is repeatedly referred to as not being a good fit and we are speaking in that way the last point that i wanted to make with you specht of this record or is that with respect to the decision about how it is correct that this individual is coming in to teach particular programs and counter intelligence but we cannot overlook the fact that with this particular record it shows that dr bell with you this question  knowledge that doctors still have teachings in this record shows the doctor still talks with respect to the regions both in afghanistan and pakistan and in the south asia region as well this was information that dr ste certainly i do i believe i have it here  more inappropriate person because of the teachings in afghanistan in the south or on south asia again subject to a pretext because there is just no reasonable juror to conclude that you're simply saying that as a pretext