barred military recruiters

barred military recruiters When Elena Kagan became dean of the law school Low Voltage Inverterthe next year, she faced a moral dilemma over whether to continue that policy.

She said she abhorred the military’s refusal to allow openly gay men and lesbians to serve. And she was distressed that Harvard had been forced to make an exception to its policy of not providing assistance to employers that discriminated in hiring.

But barring the recruiters would come with a price, costing the university hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money.

The choices she made during that long-running episode are now under scrutiny as Ms. Kagan, now the solicitor general, has become a leading potential nominee to the Supreme Court. Her management of the recruiting dispute shows her to have been, above all, a pragmatist, asserting her principles but all the while following the law, so that Harvard never lost its financing.

She repeatedly criticized “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the policy that bars gay men and lesbians from openly serving in the military. At one point she called it “a moral injustice of the first order.” She also joined a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn the law that denied federal funds to colleges and universities that barred military recruiters.

But even when she later briefly barred the military from using the law school’s main recruitment office, she continued a policy of allowing the military recruiters access to students.

Republicans have signaled that they intend to pounce on Ms. Kagan’s forceful criticism of the military’s policy on gay soldiers — and her challenge to the law — if President Obama Low Voltage Inverternominates her to the court. But the view from Harvard is more complex.