Colleague and Friend at Harvard – Dean Elena Kagan – U.S. Supreme Court Nominee!

I am honored and delighted that a colleague and friend whom I respect and admire has been nominated by President Obama for a position in the nation’s highest court, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice. I have had the opportunity to get to know Dean Kagan over the last several years, since she became the Dean of Harvard Law School. She was the first woman to ever hold the position of Dean at Harvard Law School. Elena Kagan is brilliant, but so down to earth and humble. When I visited the Law School to speak there on various occasions and attend Harvard Law School events I had the good fortune of becoming well acquainted with Dean Kagan. She has been a brilliant lawyer, a well published and highly regarded professor, the Acting Dean and, ultimately, for about five years, was Dean of the best-known law school in the world.

As if all this were not accomplishment enough, she was appointed the first woman Solicitor General of the United States. Now, about a year later, President Obama has nominated her for the nation’s highest court, the U.S. Supreme Court.

I am grateful to Elena for having personally inviting me to join the Visiting Committee of the Harvard Law School. Part of the reason that we at the Murthy Law Firm and the MurthyNayak Foundation set up two immigration law endowments at Harvard Law School was because of my high regard for Dean Kagan, who was at the helm of the Harvard Law School at the time.

Many of us were sad when Elena took a leave of absence from Harvard in early 2009 to become President Obama’s U.S. Solicitor General. Fortunately, however, another brilliant professor and a woman leader in academia and the legal profession, Martha Minow, became the new Dean in 2009 and has been doing a brilliant job!

Elena Kagan is a woman of substance, a person of character, a human being with heart, and a legal mind that is stellar. The U.S. Supreme Court would be enhanced by her presence. I am proud to call her my friend.



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