"He [Barack Obama] had some discretion as president to exercise an element of choice for certain of the positions on the masthead; it wasn't wide discretion, but he had some. And I think a lot of the minority editors on the [Harvard Law] Review expected him to use that discretion to the maximum extent possible to empower them. To put them in leadership positions, to burnish their resumes, and to give them a chance to help him and help guide the Review. He didn't do that. He declined to exercise that discretion to disrupt the results of votes or of tests that were taken by various people to assess their fitness for leadership positions.

"He was unwilling to undermine, based on the way I viewed it, meritocratic outcomes or democratic outcomes in order to advance a racial agenda. That earned him a lot of recrimination and criticism from some on the left, particularly some of the minority editors of the Review."

-- Bradford Berenson on Frontline