Daniel Flynn
Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2004

Part II: Academia Embraces Terrorists

Faculty and administrators claim to be making a principled stand against discrimination in denying students career opportunities in the military. Just don’t ask them to stick to their principles in denying themselves research grants and contracts from the military.

Last week, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Solomon Amendment, which restricts federal dollars to schools that ban military recruiters, unconstitutional as it applies to law schools. Immediately, Harvard Law School announced that it would be sending the military packing. Other institutions are likely to play follow the leader.

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  The 2-1 decision contended that “the Solomon Amendment compels law schools to propagate the military’s message.” But it doesn’t do anything of the sort.

Schools are free to ban military recruiters and the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). The Solomon Amendment merely states that the government is free to withhold funding in response.

The court actually admits this. “In light of the millions of dollars at stake,” Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights v. Rumsfeld explains, “every law school that receives federal funds had, by the 2003 recruiting season, suspended its nondiscrimination policy as applied to military recruiters.”

The decision doesn’t state, “In light of arrest,” or “In light of the government closing the school.” It states that the consequence of schools blocking the military is the military blocking federal funds going to those schools.

Where does it say in the Constitution that colleges, universities, and law schools have a First Amendment right to money from the federal government?

The decision’s bizarre take on the First Amendment makes it a good candidate for reversal, and the dissenting judge points to historic precedent supporting this contention: “no court heretofore has ever declared unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds any congressional statute specifically designed to support the military.”

Schools demand freedom from government interference as private entities at the same time that they demand unconditional subsidy from the federal government. In other words, they want to have their cake and eat it too—and they got at least one court to agree.

Their intolerance of military recruiters is just a symptom of a larger disease afflicting the campuses. Reflexive anti-Americanism substitutes for clear thought among many students, faculty, and administrators.