Importance of Being Elena

(Accuracy in Academia executive director Mal Kline spoke on U. S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s extensive academic record at a rally sponsored by Young Americans for Freedom on July 1, 2010. What follows are excerpts of his transcribed remarks.)

It’s great to be here with Young Americans for Freedom. In fact, it’s great to see Young Americans for Freedom in Washington, D.C. It’s a refreshing change. Now, I am Mal Kline. I’m with a group called Accuracy in Academia. That’s what brings me here today, and, by the way, we couldn’t find a single anti-military rally that Dean Kagan missed in the five years that she was at Harvard Law.

Now, you’ve heard that she has no record. Actually, she’s got a paper trail that goes back about thirty years. We’ve got all this covered, all this, at Academia.org. Just click on Elena Kagan and see what comes up. For instance, in 1996, in the Chicago Law Review she said, she warned of an “overabundance of ideas in the absence of direct governmental action.” What exactly does that mean? Inquiring minds want to know.

You can trace through her writings, as Mike said, a thirty-year-arc in which she has always advocated for a federal government larger in scope than in the Constitution, going right back to her days at Princeton, when she did her senior thesis on the Socialist Worker’s Party of New York and delivered a resounding tribute to them in the conclusion.  That—I’m sad to say that may have been the best she’s ever written because at least it was straightforward. I can only charitably, having suffered through the five law review articles, describe them as convoluted.

Also, five law review articles doesn’t sound like a lot for a Dean of Harvard Law. It usually isn’t, I don’t think. Some would argue that she’s been underqualified for every position she’s ever held. I’ll let some argue just that.

When she did write that senior thesis at Princeton she said that she went over it with her advisor line by line. I would humbly suggest that the U.S. Senate be a little more meticulous  than the search committee at Harvard and do the same thing with her writings.

She is in many ways the living embodiment of everything that’s wrong with academia. They owe it to us to give her more scrutiny than they have, more scrutiny than a tenure review committee gives. They are, after all, giving her the ultimate tenure: a job for life where her opinions will affect each and every one of us. It’s literally the chance of a lifetime.

My name’s Mal Kline and I approved this message.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.