
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 5, 1993                   TAG: 9306050250
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON EX-NOMINEE MAKES A GRACEFUL EXIT

In a farewell at once blunt and graceful, Lani Guinier said that President Clinton misunderstood her writings when he dropped her as his civil rights nominee but that he still had the potential for greatness.

Batting away conservatives' allegations that she was a "quota queen," Guinier said she could never have pushed for quotas because of racial discrimination suffered by her father under a college "quota of one" a half century ago at Harvard College. The news conference where she offered her defense Friday was not the public forum she had sought - a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee to consider her nomination to become assistant attorney general for civil rights.

Had Clinton not pulled the nomination, she said, she believes the Senate would have "agreed that I am the right person for this job, a job some people have said I trained for all my life."

Guinier entered hand-in-hand with her young son, Nicholas, and her husband, Temple University communications professor Nolan Bowie. She said emotionally that their love "has nourished me and helped me endure this painful process with some measure of dignity."

At times shaky, at other times slowly punching out her words in a manner no doubt familiar to her students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Guinier said Clinton, as well as her conservative critics, had misunderstood the academic writings that doomed her nomination.

"I think that the president and many others have misinterpreted my writings, which were written in an academic context, which are very nuanced, which are very ponderous," she said.

Guinier, nevertheless said she was flattered to have had the president read one of her law review articles on voting rights: "Most law professors don't have that privilege."

Clinton, facing stiff opposition to Guinier in the Senate, said Thursday night he had not closely read her law review articles before. He said he abandoned the nomination over principle, not politics.

Some of Guinier's legal writings contained views that "clearly lend themselves to interpretations that do not represent the views that I expressed on civil rights during my campaign," he said.

Guinier lavishly praised Attorney General Janet Reno, who had staunchly supported her, but offered no such words to Clinton.

by CNB