Today’s Washington Post has an interesting article—“Kagan pursued two paths on ‘don’t ask’ at Harvard”—on Elena Kagan’s course of conduct as Harvard law school dean against military recruiters. The article says that its account “suggest[s] that the talking points of Kagan’s Republican critics and her Democratic defenders distort history to some degree.” As I’ll discuss in my Part 2 post, I think that its account is far more damning of Kagan and her defenders.
For now, let me highlight this not-so-charming anecdote (emphasis added):
In fall 2004, knowing that the 3rd Circuit would soon rule, Kagan offered to discuss the issue with the veterans association, which was primarily a social club that seldom had more than a dozen members.
One alumnus, at the time a few months into his first year of law school, remembers asking the dean whether the law linking federal aid to military recruiting might have an analogy: the Federal Highway Administration did not give states money if their legal drinking age was lower than 21. The students broke into laughter. Kagan bristled, saying that never before as dean had she felt mocked, according to several people who were there.
“The room dropped several degrees, and we had to sort of defuse the situation,” said the student, who was a leader of the group and is now a federal employee. He assured Kagan that the laughter was not directed at her.
Let’s put this in context: A first-year student who is a military veteran made the obvious point that there was well-established precedent for the proposition that the federal government had broad leeway to impose conditions on its provision of federal funds. His observation elicited laughter. The reason for the laughter isn’t clear from the Post’s account, but it would appear that the other students found it amusing that the first-year student expressed a better understanding of constitutional principles than Kagan evidently had. In response to the laughter, Kagan “bristled, saying that never before as dean had she felt mocked.”
Ah, poor Dean Kagan. She could rail vehemently against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” but she “bristled” when she “felt mocked.”
Kagan’s bristling at the military veterans would seem to fit a larger—and highly unattractive—pattern in which Kagan skillfully cultivates the powerful through her “relentless networking” while treating others much less kindly. On this latter point, here are excerpts from a recent Harvard Crimson article:
[M]ultiple interviews with Law School staff depict Kagan as a brusque leader whose ambitious agenda of effecting change created a culture of high standards and sometimes fostered tense relations with some of her co-workers.…
“If you go against her, she doesn’t take very kindly to that,” said [faculty assistant Maura H.] Kelley, who was familiar with staff assistants that worked under Kagan. “If she presents an idea, she wants everyone to accept it immediately without question, without debate, without input.”…
[O]ne professor, who requested to remain anonymous to maintain relations with the Law School, said that Kagan’s tense relations with staff provide clues to how she may conduct herself as a justice.
“The treatment of subordinates is definitely relevant to her values and our assessment of her as a progressive justice,” the professor said….
(As the reader will see, the Crimson article also contains countervailing comments.)