We've documented that conservative media figures inclined to reject any Obama nominee have tirelessly tried to turn Elena Kagan's belief that “Don't' Ask, Don't Tell” is discriminatory into a narrative that she is hostile to our military and that her heart is “not with Americans in uniform.”

Well, veterans and active-duty service members who have actually interacted with Kagan at Harvard Law School have spoken out against the claim that she is an “anti-military zealot.” Erik Swabb, Geoff Orazem, and Hagan Scotten, three Iraq war veterans attending HLS, told the Washington Times that Kagan has “created an environment that is highly supportive of students who have served in the military” and that "[u]nder her leadership, Harvard Law School has also gone out of its way to highlight our military service." The Harvard Law Record reported that Scotten further said, “Kagan has great respect for the military, and if anything she wants everyone to be allowed, regardless of whether they are openly gay.”

Today Robert Merrill, a captain in the Marine Corps who is serving as a legal adviser to a Marine infantry battalion in Afghanistan and who graduated from HLS in 2008, took to the pages of the Washington Post to “weigh in” against charges that Kagan is “anti-military.” Merrill wrote that Kagan “treated the veterans at Harvard like VIPs, and she was a fervent advocate of our veterans association. She was decidedly against 'don't ask, don't tell,' but that never affected her treatment of those who had served. He further wrote:

In 2005, I went from fighting in the streets of Fallujah to studying in the hallowed halls of Harvard Law School in a span of seven months. I arrived as an active-duty Marine Corps captain and transitioned from the infantry to the judge advocate general's corps. To the best of my knowledge, I am the only active-duty service member to have received a JD from Harvard during the deanship of Elena Kagan.

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In my opinion, Kagan's positions never affected the services' ability to recruit at Harvard. Behind the scenes, the dean ensured that our tiny HLS Veterans Association never lacked for funds or access to facilities. Recruiters simply could not use the school's Office of Career Services. Does this demonstrate an ”activist" streak, as some have proclaimed? I don't think so. The school's policy against discrimination was akin to black-letter law. If anything, Kagan was an activist in ensuring that military recruiters had viable access to students and facilities despite the official ban. A Boston-area recruiter later told me that the biggest hurdle he faced recruiting at Harvard Law was trying to answer the students' strangely intellectual questions.

Kagan's Veterans Day dinners became a tradition. During my final year at Harvard, she treated the veterans to dinner at a restaurant in Cambridge. (Military service has its perks.) Again, there was no agenda other than to thank us for our service and to ask about our military experiences. Over wine and dinner, Kagan listened attentively to our war stories. I later told her that her blunt style of leadership would have served her well in the Marines. I took to calling her “Colonel Kagan” whenever we crossed paths on campus.