White House Press Release - WSJ Op-ed: Kagan's Predecessor at Harvard Law School Sets the Record Straight on School's Military Recruiting Policy

Excerpts of the op-ed by Robert Clark are printed below. The op-ed, in its entirety, can be found online HERE.

Kagan and the Military: What Really Happened
As dean, she upheld a policy already in place.
By ROBERT C. CLARK

"With the announcement of Elena Kagan as nominee for the open seat on the Supreme Court, comments both sound and foolish are sure to flood the media. In the prior category is the observation that Ms. Kagan is a brilliant legal scholar with a superb record of service in the federal government and as a law school dean. In the foolish category, we are already hearing a replay of an attack critics used against her when she was being considered for her current position as solicitor general."

...

"As dean, Ms. Kagan basically followed a strategy toward military recruiting that was already in place. Here, some background may be helpful: Since 1979, the law school has had a policy requiring all employers who wish to use the assistance of the School's Office of Career Services (OCS) to schedule interviews and recruit students to sign a statement that they do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. For years, the U.S. military, because of its "don't ask, don't tell" policy, was not able to sign such a statement and so did not use OCS. It did, however, regularly recruit on campus because it was invited to do so by an official student organization, the Harvard Law School Veterans Association."

...

"Outside observers may disagree with the moral and policy judgments made by those at Harvard Law School. But it would be very wrong to portray Elena Kagan as hostile to the U.S. military. Quite the opposite is true."

Mr. Clark is a professor and former dean at Harvard Law School.