Ms. Kagan declined to take the Royall professorship. Instead, she chose a new chair in the name of Charles Hamilton Houston, the first African-American on the Harvard Law Review and a crusader against Jim Crow laws.
Ms. Kagan’s history on race issues at Harvard has come under scrutiny since President Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court on Monday. Critics say that she did not create enough racial diversity at Harvard, and that in the absence of any writings or opinions, her hiring practices serve as a clue to her thinking. Her supporters counter that she demonstrated a commitment to equality; her claiming the chair in the name of Mr. Houston, they said, is but one example.
In the nearly six years that Ms. Kagan was dean, from 2003 to 2009, she hired a total of 43 permanent, full-time faculty members, 32 of whom were tenured and tenured-track. Of those, 25 were white men, 6 were white women and one was an Asian-American woman. Of the other 11, 6 were white men, 2 were women and 3 were minority men (2 black and one Indian), according to a law school official.
Law school officials said the numbers did not reflect the whole story because offers were made to other minority and women scholars; some were declined and some still open. But others said the record spoke for itself.
“Kagan’s performance as dean at Harvard raises doubts about her commitment to equality for traditionally disadvantaged groups,” Guy-Uriel Charles, a black law professor at Duke, wrote last month in an oft-cited post.
During roughly the same period that Ms. Kagan was at Harvard, Mr. Charles wrote, Yale Law School hired just 10 faculty members; 5 were women, and only one was a minority.
Ms. Kagan’s track record on diversity improved during the last year when she became solicitor general. In that office, she has hired six people — three women and three men (one white, one Asian and one Indian).
Lester K. Spence, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on theroot.com, a Web site devoted to black issues, that Ms. Kagan appeared to be more concerned with ideological diversity than with diversity of race or gender.
“President Obama wants us to support his choice not because she’s got a strong record, not even because she has a particularly visible record, but because he knows her,” Mr. Spence wrote. “I’m not buying it,” he added. “And even if Kagan ends up being the best justice this side of Thurgood Marshall, you shouldn’t either.”
After it was clear that Mr. Obama, the first black president, would nominate Ms. Kagan, several black women wrote to him saying they were disappointed that he had not nominated a black woman.
The women, who included Melanie Campbell of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, also said they wanted to learn more about Ms. Kagan’s record on civil rights.
The administration has been pushing back against any suggestion that Ms. Kagan has been insensitive on racial matters, as have some of her black supporters.
Ronald S. Sullivan, a black law professor whom Ms. Kagan recruited to Harvard, wrote on thegrio.com, another site devoted to black issues, that “no elite law school has done enough” with respect to minority hiring. But, he noted, her spurning of the Royall chair “was a significant statement made by the dean of one of the nation’s top law schools.“
And, he said, Ms. Kagan had expanded the clinical teaching program at Harvard so that “thousands of indigent and under-represented citizens received quality legal services that they otherwise would not have been able to afford.”
Randall L. Kennedy, another black professor at Harvard Law, also strongly defended Ms. Kagan’s hiring practices. He said in an article in The Huffington Post that no dean was solely responsible for hiring faculty, with each one requiring a majority if not a supermajority of votes. This, he said, gets to be a complicated proposition.
Still, he said, Ms. Kagan supported programs that have helped advance minorities, and she helped form a committee to identify promising racial minority candidates.
While she was dean, an average of about 30 percent of the entering classes were minorities, up from about 25 percent in the previous six years, according to a Harvard official.
One of Ms. Kagan’s strongest backers has been Charles J. Ogletree Jr., perhaps the most prominent black law professor at Harvard. He has noted in interviews and articles that she has been supportive of men and women of color among both students and faculty.
“If you look at her whole record, ” Mr. Ogletree said in an interview on Thursday with Essence.com, “I think it tells you that she worked diligently to make opportunities available for others. The questions about who she recommended and who was tenured are fair, and I think she’ll be able to respond to them.”