Wisdom of Solomon
The disgrace of blocking military recruiters from campus.
Wednesday, February 2, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
Don't ask. Don't tell. Having no desire to crash our e-mail server, we'll save discussion of gays in the military for another day. Rather, today's subject is lawyers in the military. Surely Americans of all points of view can agree that in an age of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the military can use the best attorneys it can get.
So it's a disgrace that some of the nation's law schools, objecting to the Pentagon's "discrimination policies," refuse to permit military recruiters to make their pitch on campus, relegating them instead to unofficial off-campus venues. Law students pondering their first career move can be wined and dined by fancy firms that set up recruitment tables at campus job fairs, but they have to stroll over to the local Day's Inn to seek out the lonely military recruiter.
To put it another way, the same liberals who object that the military includes too many lower-class kids won't let military recruiters near the schools that contain students who will soon join the upper-class elite. It's almost enough to make us contemplate restoring the draft, starting with law school students.
Needless to say, such scholastic shenanigans don't go down well with Congress, which in 1994 passed the Solomon Amendment, named for the late New York Republican, Gerald Solomon. The law requires schools that receive federal funds to provide equal access to military recruiters. Today, the House is scheduled to vote on a resolution brought by Alabama Republican Mike Rogers that would restate the House's support for the Solomon Amendment. Something similar passed the House and Senate by overwhelming margins last year and was incorporated into the Defense Authorization bill.
The impetus for Mr. Rogers's move is a November ruling by the federal appeals court in Philadelphia in favor of a group of law schools and legal scholars that had contested the Solomon law. The 2-1 opinion found that the Solomon Amendment violates the schools' First Amendment rights to free speech and association. Next stop is the Supreme Court, which is expected to take the appeal that the Justice Department plans to bring.
There are many peculiarities to this lawsuit, starting with the fact that the group that brought it--the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights--declines to release the names of the 26 law schools and faculties that belong to its coalition. Some of the participants (New York University and Georgetown, for example) have outed themselves since the suit was brought in 2003, but others steadfastly maintain their own don't-ask-don't-tell policy.
In any event, there should be no legal question about Congress's right to put conditions on grants of federal funds to universities. It does this all the time--including requirements that colleges adhere to certain civil rights and gender standards. With a few exceptions, universities have no trouble going along and courts have no problem letting them.
If, as is likely, the Supreme Court overturns the appeals court decision, that will be the end of it. Almost all universities, public and private, take millions of dollars in federal money that would be next to impossible to give up. That's especially true of the elite schools, both public and private. Still, it would be nice to think that the nation's universities would welcome the military for reasons other than the mercenary. Patriotism, perhaps?
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