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Dean Kagan In The News

Big Plans Highlight Elena Kagan's 2L Year: As she enters her sophomore year as dean of Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan lays out an ambitious agenda for her tenure. Her immodest plans include expanding the faculty, changing the face of the campus, improving the student experience, and reviewing a curriculum that has served the school for well over a century. (Harvard Gazette)
Meet the Dean: Barely two months on the job and the Law School has already felt the impact of Dean Kagan's tenure. The Pound Hall classrooms are more alluring and technologically friendly and more students than ever can now lounge outside the Hark at the newly-built plaza or burn off calories at Hemenway without spending forty minutes in silent hatred at the person who has obviously violated the twenty-minute rule of treadmill use. But the new dean is not stopping there. (Harvard Law Record)
Taking the Law in Her Hands: Elena Kagan, a professor at the law school, is both modest and mindful in recognition of history in the making. "I think it is a milestone," Kagan says, "a great thing that shows how far Harvard has come and how far the legal profession has come, in terms of women's position. It's fitting, and very nice, that it's happened on the 50th anniversary of the first graduating class at Harvard to include women. I suspect that some students will find it inspiring." (Ms. Magazine)
At the HLS Helm: "There's lots to do," she said, HLS's strengths notwithstanding. Maintaining a great law school means making great appointments—finding people whose scholarship is "cutting edge" and "socially useful," she explained. It means developing "a vibrant, energetic, intellectual community,...looking at what we teach and how we teach it—asking ourselves whether this is the right curriculum and pedagogy for these times. And it means," she continued, "thinking about our ties to the legal profession, which I think, increasingly over the years—at all law schools—have been attenuated." (Harvard Magazine)
People in the News: Elena Kagan: Despite being a relative newcomer at the school, constitutional law expert Elena Kagan was seen by many as an obvious choice to replace Robert C. Clark as dean of Harvard Law School (HLS). In the four years since she arrived at HLS—she was a visiting professor for two years, then gained tenure in 2001—Kagan has thrown herself into the administrative matters of the school, gaining respect and visibility for her work on a committee studying the possibility of a move to Allston. (The Harvard Crimson)
Interview with Elena Kagan: When Elena Kagan takes the helm at Harvard Law School on July 1, she'll make history as its first female dean in 186 years. Most recently a professor at Harvard Law, Kagan was selected by a nine-member panel to succeed Robert C. Clark after his 14-year tenure at the school. (Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly)
Law School Names Dean: Elena Kagan, who received tenure in 2001 after only two years as a visiting professor at HLS, has been chosen to replace current HLS Dean Robert C. Clark when he steps down this June, after 14 years at the helm. (The Harvard Crimson)
First Woman Is Appointed As Dean of Harvard Law: Elena Kagan, a former White House aide to President Bill Clinton and onetime clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court, has been appointed dean of the Harvard University Law School, Lawrence H. Summers, the university president, announced yesterday. (The New York Times)
Elena Kagan Named Next Dean of Harvard Law School: Professor of Law Elena Kagan will be the next Dean of Harvard Law School, President Lawrence H. Summers announced today. A leading scholar of administrative law, Kagan has served on the faculties of both Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, in addition to holding senior legal and policy positions in the federal government. An alumna of Harvard Law School and a former law clerk to the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, Kagan will succeed Robert C. Clark, the Royall Professor of Law, who in November announced plans to conclude his service as dean on June 30, 2003, following fourteen years of distinguished service. (Official announcement)