Kagan's Anti-Military Stance Didn't Speak for Harvard

Elena Kagan is currently under fire for her opposition to allowing military recruitment on Harvard's campus. Yet Kagan’s criticisms of the military were not representative of everyone at the university.

Elena Kagan is currently coming under fire for her critical remarks regarding allowing military recruitment on the Harvard campus.  As Dean of Harvard’s Law School, Kagan banned the military from using the school’s Office of Career Services due to the military’s ban on allowing gay and lesbian troops to openly serve.  After  a Supreme Court upholding the right of the military to recruit on campus, Kagan said: "I hope that many members of the Harvard Law School community will accept the Court's invitation to express their views clearly and forcefully regarding the military's discriminatory employment policy. As I have said before, I believe that policy is profoundly wrong -- both unwise and unjust."

Yet Kagan’s stance is not representative of everyone in Harvard’s ivory tower. When he was President of Harvard University, Larry Summers gave many speeches to ROTC classes where he extolled their service, sacrifice, and heroism.

Remarks from 2002:

On that horrible and fateful day of September 11th, the only people who were going up the stairs in the World Trade Center were public servants, were public servants wearing uniforms. None of us should ever forget that. All forms of public service make a great contribution to our society. I believe there is a special grace and a special nobility to those who are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice and the ultimate commitment to their country. We are fortunate as a university; we are fortunate as citizens of this country, to have young men like these three who are prepared to serve in our nation’s armed forces.

You know, we venerate at this university—as we should—openness, debate, the free expression of ideas, as central to what we are all about and what we should be. But we must also respect and admire moral clarity when it is required as in the preservation of our national security and the defense of our country. All of us admire those many graduates of this university who have served in our country’s armed forces. They deserve our respect and our admiration, never more than at this present moment in our country’s history.

Remarks from 2003:

Let me make one final observation from my experience in Washington. Every year there is a dinner called the Gridiron Dinner that brings together people from the congressional branch, the executive branch, the press corps, and others to celebrate and laugh. At the beginning of that dinner, the songs of each military branch are performed. The people present who had served in that branch of the service stand up when their song is played. I remember when I attended that dinner the gentleman who was sitting beside me who was about 25 years older than me, looked out and noticed that there weren't nearly as many people standing as when he had attended the dinner 25 years before. At that time, most of the people in the room stood up at one moment or the other, but at the dinner I attended, not many people stood up. And he wondered what that meant for the country. He noted that the military is central to the leadership of the country, and that it was so vitally important that those in the military and those with an understanding of the military be closely connected. He wondered what the lack of people standing was going to mean for leadership of our country in the next generation if the trend continued.

Remarks from 2004:

But I would say equally to you - this is the point that must be understood but frankly is often misunderstood - that we are free because we are strong, and that freedom depends on our strength. All of us who cherish and pray for that freedom must also support those who contribute to the strength that maintains our freedom. There is much you can do and should argue about every aspect of our country's policies but the idea that freedom depends on strength is one we should all be able to agree on.

Remarks from 2006:

Whatever you think about any given policy issues - and there are important policy issues on which there is fundamentally divided opinion - whatever you think about any issue, I believe that our country is most important and I believe that our country is best served when great universities like this one stand with those who defend the freedom that makes it possible for us to do all the wonderful things that we are able to do here.