Praise the Content of Their Character

To the editors:

Your recent articles on the appointment of Professor of Law Elena Kagan as Dean of the Law School and your obituary for former Medical School Dean Harold Amos, trivializes and insults their accomplishments (News, “Law School Names Dean,” April 4 and News, "First African-American Medical School Chair Dies at 84,” March 12). The first Sentence of the article on Kagan says, “A woman will lead Harvard Law School (HLS) for the first time in its 186-year history,” and the obituary for Amos begins by saying “Harold Amos, who was Harvard Medical Schools first black department chair ...”

How terrible it is that Kagan is reduced to her gender, and Amos to the color of his skin. Why not start off the article by writing about Amos’ many scientific accomplishments in bacterial metabolism, animal cell culture and virology, as well as his outstanding qualities as a warm human being and kind professor? Why not focus on Elena Kagan’s work in administrative law, constitutional law, and civil procedure, and her special insights regarding the law surrounding the presidency?

By focusing on who these people are inside and their scholarly accomplishments, rather than leading an article with the incidental fact that when they were appointed they happened to be the first of a particular group to hold a position, you would be celebrating their lives, rather than reducing them—for a sentence, at least—to a statistic.

Samuel H. Lipoff ’04

April 7, 2003