Reprinted from the May 19, 2003 edition of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly

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.

Kagan started her career clerking for legendary jurists Abner Mikva and Thurgood Marshall, after which she worked at a Washington, D.C. law firm for a few years before heading to the University of Chicago to teach. She was a tenured professor when she returned to the capitol as associate counsel to President Clinton, and worked as a member of his Domestic Policy Council during his second term. In 1999, Clinton nominated Kagan to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. However, her nomination expired when Congress adjourned in 2000, and the Senate Judiciary Committee declined to bring a number of nominations forward for hearings.

Kagan returned to her alma mater, Harvard Law, soon after, teaching administrative and constitutional law, as well as civil procedure. During that time she gained recognition not only as a professor and scholar, but also for her work on the HLS Locational Options Committee. Under Kagan's chairmanship, the committee explored the advantages and disadvantages of relocating the law school to Harvard's recently acquired property in Allston - earning her praise from members of the community for her even-handedness in handling the volatile issue. She recently spoke with Lawyers Weekly's Correy Stephenson about the future of the law school and the pressure of being its first female dean.

Born: April 28, 1960; New York City

Education: Harvard Law School, 1986; Worcester College, Oxford, master's in philosophy, 1983; Princeton University, 1981

Bar admission: New York, 1988; Washington, D.C., 1989

Professional experience: Harvard Law School, professor (1999-2003); deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy/deputy director of Domestic Policy Council (1997-1999); associate counsel to the president (1995-1996); University of Chicago Law School, professor (1991-1997); Williams & Connolly, associate (1989-1991); clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (1987-1988); clerk to U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Abner Mikva (1986-1987)

Professional affiliations: American Bar Association

Outside interests: Opera, baseball, American history

* * *

Q. What goals do you have for your tenure as dean?

A. Most importantly, I want to create the kind of intellectual environment and make the necessary appointments to the faculty to ensure that the most cutting-edge and socially useful legal scholarship is happening here at the law school. Another goal is to engage in a real review of our curriculum and our pedagogy - essentially how and what we teach - with the goal that our students leave here as excited and ready as possible to embark on their legal careers.

Q. How can you further prepare students for life after graduation?

A. I very much want to enhance the law school's ties to the profession. I think those ties have weakened over time at all law schools. The academy can learn from what the profession is doing, and vice versa. I think it is essential to give our students an accurate sense of what the real world of practicing is like, and people in the profession have a very good perspective on what we do as educators because they see the products of legal education.

Q. Are there areas of the law school you hope to expand or improve upon?

A. Related to additional ties to the profession, I really want to promote public service at the law school. I want to make people aware of the plethora of opportunities of public service, the many ways and contexts in which it can be done. I believe it is essential to instill in students that it's an important aspect of their future legal careers, including those in private law firms and business entities. Public service is not limited to a job in a public interest office. Students should always be thinking about what they can be giving back to the community, the nation and the world, and law schools should highlight that responsibility.

Q. What about specific subjects or legal trends that you would like the school to reflect?

A. First and foremost, international law. I recently read a statistic that at law schools generally, 70 percent of students graduate without any taking any type of international or comparative law class. And that shouldn't be happening - we should be making clear to our students the great importance of knowledge about other legal systems throughout the world. For 21st century law schools, the future lies in international and comparative law, and this is what law schools today ought to be focusing on.

Q. The New York Times reported that at a meeting in March with the school's president, students expressed concerns about campus diversity and class size. How will you respond to these concerns?

A. We are a large law school and we derive great benefits from our size. We have greater diversity than any other law school in terms of ideas, perspectives, characteristics and demographics. ... However, although our size is a strength, it is true that students have found our size to frustrate a sense of community. To alleviate this problem, we split our first year class into more sections, from four sections of 140 students each to seven sections of 80 students each. I think students have found a difference in their ability to get to know a small community of students really well. Our goal is to create neighborhoods within a big city where people can find community. We are well on our way to doing that, but we have to continue to do so.

Q. What can you tell me about future plans to relocate the law school to Allston

A. I have no update on that issue. The law school looked into this issue very carefully and presented a report to the central administration. The report itself contained no recommendation, but discussed the pros and cons of a move. There are a variety of options on the table as to what to do with Harvard's land there - some involving housing and cultural facilities, some involving sciences, some involving graduate schools, and some are a mix of all of the above. The decision about an Allston campus will affect the entire university so it should be made by the central administration.

Q. What do you think will be your greatest obstacle?

A. One challenge is to ensure that a big institution also acts as a community. I'm a city girl myself, and this law school is a big city with all of the wonderful strengths of a large city, the diversity and the excitement. But any large institution can find it hard to achieve a sense of community, common purpose and vision, when so many people with such a diversity of views try to come together and act for a common good. As dean of HLS, the hardest thing will be to make people feel as if they are part of a single community and working together for a common good. If you can get 80 faculty members and 550 students and all kinds of staff pulling together for a common goal, then you can accomplish great things.

Q. What differences have you noticed since you were a student at Harvard, and now as a professor and dean?

A. I was at Harvard in the mid-1980s. I think it was a much less student-friendly place then and not as many faculty members cared a lot about students. I think students weren't viewed as central in the way that they are now. That is not to say that I didn't love my law school experience. I loved the excitement and the bustle of Harvard. But I think the institution as a whole didn't take as seriously as it now does the need to ensure that students really are getting something out of the experience. Before, the school almost just assumed a meaningful student experience rather than included it as part of its mission.

Q. Your appointment has been called "extraordinary," "visionary," and a "statement of Harvard's progress." Do you feel any pressure as the first female dean of the law school?

A. I feel a sense of great excitement and great challenge. I think that this is going to be a great time for the law school. We're in a very strong position right now, and we're in that position as a result of the really remarkable tenure of the current dean. I'm becoming dean of a school that is strong in all fundamental respects and I'm being given the opportunity to build on strength. That's a wonderful thing not to have to fix problems, but instead, to set ever higher standards. So it's exciting and challenging and a little bit scary - but scary in the way that all exciting things are scary. I can't wait to start!

Q. How do you think your governmental experience will help you in your new role?

A. In government one of the things I had to do was to manage people, and certainly one of the tasks of a dean is management. I also learned some political skills, and certainly deans who have good political skills have an advantage over deans who don't. I hope all of my experiences help because you look at this daunting job and you feel you can use all the help you can get!

Q. Will you continue teaching?

A. I'm teaching a seminar on administrative law issues in the fall, and on the basis of that I'll decide whether to teach a larger administrative law class in the spring.