President Obama is reportedly going to nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court (SCOTUS), without even interviewing a single Black jurist. For many in his largely progressive base, Kagan’s appointment would be an unforgiveable betrayal—yet another by this president.
For some, the most troublesome thing about Ms. Kagan is her sparse publication record. In other words, very little is known about her thinking on any of the issues that might be heard by the high court. Namely, they want to know how she feels about women’s reproductive rights, gay marriage, immigration reform, the death penalty, separation of church and state, equal protection under the law, state’s rights, and the list goes on and on.
But far more troubling, at least to this writer, is the profoundly disturbing news emerging of her dismal “minority” hiring record as Dean of Harvard Law School (HLS). Apparently while at the helm of that Holy Grail of legal training, Kagan hired 29 tenure-track faculty—and not one of them was Black, Latino or Native American. None. Nada. Zero.
Do I have your attention yet?
To be exact, Kagan hired 23 White men, 5 White women, and one Asian American woman. Not surprisingly, many legal scholars and journalists—although not the Black Press Corps— have begun to publicly question the likely nominee’s commitment to racial diversity—or lack thereof.
And what of affirmative action, which has been substantially weakened, barely surviving a barrage of legal challenges? And there are certainly more to come.
President Obama, though, is said to be high on Kagan’s bona fides as a bridge-builder, one able to build consensus across party and ideological lines, as she famously did at HLS, where hiring had been at a virtual standstill, particularly that of conservative faculty. But is that really a solid basis upon which to make a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land, that Kagan is a proven right-wing accommodationist? (So much so, the conservative icon Bill Kristol has endorsed her publicly.)
