by Elise Spenner
Over three years ago, Anna did a “time capsule” series in which she scrutinized the student writing of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Elena Kagan, and Brett Kavanaugh, as well as now-Attorney General Merrick Garland. I’ve decided to revisit her project and examine the college writing of California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger.
Kruger is one of three top contenders for President Biden’s first Supreme Court nomination, along with Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the D.C. Circuit and Judge J. Michelle Childs, who sits on a district court in South Carolina. To get to know Kruger and her writing better, I took a glance at her prolific contributions to the Harvard Crimson.
Leondra Kruger, Harvard Crimson writer (1993-1995)
Kruger wrote for the Crimson between 1993 and 1995, and she already tended to tackle sensitive and controversial issues with poise.
In much of her writing, Kruger gave voice to oft-untold perspectives on the Harvard campus. In one year, she reported on a meeting of the Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Student Association, and their frustration at the accurate representation of bisexuals in media. Her last article for the Crimson covered a Harvard conference on Native American gaming that addressed the emergence of Native American-run casinos. Kruger’s piece challenged the notion that “Slot machines and cultural decay” go “hand in hand,” to highlight the integral role that casinos could play in propping up Native American communities.
When the midterms came around in the fall of 1994, Kruger covered the elections extensively, on the local, state, and national stages. Maybe it was a beat she grudgingly took from her editors, but Kruger covered the topic intensely. I highly recommend “GOP Neophytes Vie to Take on a Legend,” which previews the eclectic, crowded field of Republicans — including a green Mitt Romney — posing a challenge to Senator Edward Kennedy.
Her lede, as well, was characteristically eloquent:
It’s six Republicans–a doctor, a talk-show host, a radio advertising sales manager and three millionaires–versus one Democrat, a 32-year incumbent senator with the most famous last name in Massachusetts.
Some call this year’s U.S. senatorial campaign a case of anti-incumbent fever. Some call it “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” And some simply call it crazy.
One of Kruger’s lighter pieces was a well-sourced feature on the annual performing arts spring break. Harvard a capella groups, a tropical island, and free drinks… Kruger clearly had a laugh or two while writing this. The ease with which she switches from hard-hitting reporting to conversational interaction with the reader is enviable.
Kruger’s editors even let her get away with this extended lede:
It’s the day before spring break and you’ve turned in your last blue book. You throw your Chem 17 textbook into the corner, pick up your bags and hit the door. Two and a half hours later you’ve landed on some sundrenched airstrip where tropical island breezes blow all thoughts of midterms from your mind.
Think you’ve left Harvard behind? Think again.
Sharing the sun, sand and surf with you are the Din and Tonics, the Krokodiloes, the Opportunes, the Pitches and Hasty Pudding Theatricals.
A cappella groups–don’t leave home without them.
Maybe it’s the proximity to the Bermuda Triangle, but vacationing Harvard students say their classmates are eerily ubiquitous on an island about the size of a Dunster single.
“The island is small enough that you can’t avoid anybody,” says Ian R. Liston ’96, business manager–and second tenor–of the Harvard Din and Tonics.
The piece is full of clever turns of phrase, custom-made for a Harvard audience: an island “about the size of a Dunster single,” performers that find it “easier to hold a steady pitch than to walk a steady line,” and a club so full of Harvard students that it looks “more like the Eliote Fete than a tropical hotspot.”
Particularly impressive was Kruger’s ability to craft a narrative around the voices of her subjects. Either she was well-known on campus, or she seemed inherently trustworthy — her sources were candid, thoughtful, and amusing.
In her last year with the Crimson, Kruger seemed to direct her coverage toward issues of race and racial relations. She covered Cambridge’s hot-button affirmative action policy, the Black Students Association evolution into an outwardly political organization concerned with the “racial climate outside of Harvard’s walls, and wrote an admiring piece about a Gwendolyn Brooks appearance on campus.
A long-form piece by Kruger shed light on the experience of biracial students at Harvard; at the time, an “invisible but growing minority.”
Many students suggest that on a campus rife with fears of and discussion about racial self-segregation, it is difficult to hold onto two ethnic identities.
From the moment they are forced to select the appropriate box on their college applications, biracial Harvard students say they often find themselves under an enormous pressure to choose one identity or other.
After reading many of Kruger’s pieces for the Crimson, I picked up on a strong affinity for sub-headings, a penchant for clever ledes, and a conscious decision to cover issues with concrete significance for the broader Harvard community. Joe Mathews — a colleague on both the Crimson and Kruger’s high school newspaper, The Paw Print — confirmed that Kruger was “deeply interested in the world outside [our high school’s] cloistered gates.” Kruger, Mathews said, was unafraid to take on stories about “the school’s library, diversity, drugs,” and even the shooting of a student over summer break. Kruger’s writing as a high school student foretells her writing in college, which in turn laid the groundwork for her writing as a judge: clear, powerful, and fair.
You can take a look at Kruger’s complete portfolio of stories for the Crimson here.
High School SCOTUS 