GOP attacking Kagan for ROTC being kicked out of Harvard

Kagan seems to be distancing herself from the ROTC issue (ROTC's had been kicked out of many college campuses in recent years because of the military's ban on gay service members). I'm not entirely sure I like seeing her do this - it comes off a bit as running away from "the gay," nor am I sure that her recent explanation of her position is entirely factual.

From ThinkProgress:

As part of the confirmation process for solicitor general, Kagan explained in response to a question by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) that she had no input on Harvard’s ROTC policy:

• As dean of Harvard Law School, your decision to restrict military recruiters’ access to students was limited to career services. Does your personal opposition to the Solomon Amendment mean that you also support barring the ROTC from college campuses?

• As dean of the law school, did you ever express objection to the exclusion of the ROTC from Harvard?

Answer: As dean of Harvard Law School, I felt a responsibility to apply and defend the School’s longstanding nondiscrimination policy, which prohibits our Office of Career Services from assisting any organization (not just the military) that discriminates in employment. At the same time, I worked to ensure that military recruiters in fact had available an alternative and effective method of access to our students. My statements and actions defending the Law School’s general nondiscrimination policy did not sweep more broadly. The position I took does not entail a view on the exclusion of ROTC from college campuses, and I never expressed a position on the exclusion of ROTC from Harvard.

And here is the Washington Post from a month ago:

Four months after becoming dean of Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan sent an e-mail to students and faculty lamenting that military recruiters had arrived on campus, once again, in violation of the school's anti-discrimination policy. But under government rules, she wrote, the entire university would jeopardize its federal aid unless the law school helped the recruiters, despite the armed forces' ban on openly gay members.

"This action causes me deep distress," Kagan wrote that morning in October 2003. "I abhor the military's discriminatory recruitment policy." It is, she said, "a profound wrong -- a moral injustice of the first order."

That sounds like a position to me. Why not just defend it?