Yesterday, we heard Elena Kagan downplay her role in barring military recruiting from Harvard Law School. She pretends that her break from policy was modest, hardly worthy of note, and in any case was later reversed. She says she and university president Larry Summers were in virtual lock-step.

That certainly is not how it was perceived at the time. In a 2004 masthead editorial, the Harvard Crimson condemned Summers for not getting the university involved in litigating the Solomon Amendment, which allows the DoD to bar federal funding to universities who keep recruiters off campus. But the same editorial sings the praises of Elena Kagan, then dean of the law school, for her “swift action” in “barring the military from official recruiting” after a ruling of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Take it from a Crimson editor who was often a dissenting vote on these matters: It was crystal clear during this era that Kagan was the radical on the issue of the military on campus. It was Summers — and virtually Summers alone — who emerged as the pro-military voice of the campus and who guided Kagan and others back onto the reservation.

–Travis Kavulla is the Republican nominee for Montana’s public service commission.