Kagan treated the veterans at Harvard like VIPs

Around the time that Kagan sent the first of several e-mails criticizing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” she hosted a Veterans Day dinner for the few student-veterans attending Harvard Law. That was the first time I met Kagan. There was no agenda for the dinner, as best as I could tell, other than to thank us for our service. I don’t believe “don’t ask, don’t tell” ever came up. Either because of her charm or the quality of the food, I became one of her admirers.

In my opinion, Kagan’s positions never affected the services’ ability to recruit at Harvard. Behind the scenes, the dean ensured that our tiny HLS Veterans Association never lacked for funds or access to facilities. Recruiters simply could not use the school’s Office of Career Services. Does this demonstrate an “activist” streak, as some have proclaimed? I don’t think so. The school’s policy against discrimination was akin to black-letter law. If anything, Kagan was an activist in ensuring that military recruiters had viable access to students and facilities despite the official ban. A Boston-area recruiter later told me that the biggest hurdle he faced recruiting at Harvard Law was trying to answer the students’ strangely intellectual questions.