In Kagan '81, a Supreme contender

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When Elena Kagan ’81 (as in 1981, when she graduated from Princeton University) handed in her history thesis, she couldn’t have known the attention her senior year work would receive nearly 30 years later. Kagan, now the U.S. solicitor general, is widely considered to be a strong contender to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who recently announced that he will retire in June.

In light of this speculation, Michael Goldfarb '02 argued in a blog post last week for The Weekly Standard that it is important to closely examine Kagan’s undergraduate thesis on socialist movements in early 20th-century New York, saying it indicates political attitudes “sympathetic to the socialists.”

Several people here at the University who knew her as an undergraduate, however, said Kagan is not a political radical.

“She’s been called a left-wing crazy for what she wrote under my direction,” said history professor Sean Wilentz, who was Kagan’s thesis adviser. “I gather that publicists … of the conservatives are trying to raise all kinds of bogeymen around her. That is a mark of how formidable a candidate she would be.”

Calling her “the opposite of an ideologue,” Wilentz added that he thinks Kagan would be a “very pragmatic liberal” voice if nominated to the Supreme Court.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/05/15/23711/