John Kerry apparently could not believe the questions he was getting Tuesday.

The former U.S. secretary of state and Massachusetts senator was back on Capitol Hill for a House Oversight Committee hearing on combatting climate change, but found himself at times being questioned about his college major.

“Isn’t it true you have a science degree from Yale?” asked Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, who studied engineering at MIT and doubts the science of human-caused climate change.

Massie took issue with Kerry’s recent criticism of a panel formed by President Donald Trump, reportedly intended to downplay the threat of climate change. The committee follows the Republican president’s dismissal of a report last fall by 13 federal agencies detailing the “intensifying” damage of global warming in the United States.


In a Washington Post opinion piece in February, Kerry called Trump’s climate change panel a “council of doubters and deniers” and a “kangaroo court.”

“It sounds like you’re questioning the credentials of the president’s advisers,” Massie said Tuesday.

So, the 48-year-old congressman instead turned the subject to Kerry’s credentials. The 75-year-old former Democratic presidential candidate corrected Massie’s question about his “science degree,” noting that he actually received a bachelor of arts degree in political science from Yale.

“How do you get a bachelor of arts in a science?” Massie asked.

“Well, it’s liberal arts education,” Kerry replied, before Massie interjected to say, “OK, so it’s not really science.”