who supported challenging the military policy
Far from being rebellious, her colleagues here say,
motor repairMs. Kagan bowed to the will of Lawrence H. Summers, then the president of the university and now director of Mr. Obama’s National Economic Council. Mr. Summers had appointed her dean and did not want Harvard to fight the federal government. Ms. Kagan did not join in when more than half the law school faculty publicly urged him to sue the government over the law that tied federal money to military recruitment.
A truly radical act, suggested Robert H. Mnookin, one Harvard law professor, would have been for Ms. Kagan to quit.
“Elena is very good at reading the lay of the land, at having a sense of who is where on what issue and what the art of the possible might be, who can be influenced, who cannot,” said Professor Mnookin.
“In that sense of being political, she is extremely gifted,” he said. “She’s very purposeful.”
Her supporters say that despite the outcome, which was dictated first by the university’s needs and then by the Supreme Court, she demonstrated her resolve to fight discrimination.
“This is not an issue where it was easy to put your finger in the air and see which way the wind was blowing,” said Charles J. Ogletree, a Harvard law professor who supported challenging the military policy. “There was very little benefit to her personally by weighing in on one side.”
The issue arose long before Ms. Kagan, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1986, came back as a professor and became dean in 2003.
Because of the military’s policy against openly gay soldiers, the law school in 1979 barred military recruiters from using its Office of Career Services, the central clearinghouse through which employers from all over the world seek to recruit top-notch law students.
But in the mid-1990s, Congress approved several versions of the Solomon Amendment — named for Representative Gerald B. H. Solomon, a conservative Republican from upstate New York —
motor repairdenying federal funds to schools that barred military recruiters.
