Law Professors Humiliated

That could be the headline over the news of the eight to nothing Supreme Court decision in the case known as Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights. The “Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights” included New York University Law School and the faculty of CUNY law school, whose view of First Amendment law was rejected resoundingly yesterday by a high court that includes such liberal lions as Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens. The court also, by the way, unanimously rejected an alternate interpretation of the law that also opposed Rumsfeld and was offered up by faculty from Columbia and Harvard law schools.We’ve never been fans of the idea that restricting government funding is tantamount to a restriction on speech, anyway, even when the courts have held in support of that proposition, as they did in the case of the Mary splattered with elephant dung at the Brooklyn Museum. In Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court held that requiring law schools to give military recruiters access to students as a condition of federal university funding did not violate the First Amendment rights of the universities and in fact was entirely within Congress’s Article I authority to provide for the common defense and to raise and support armies.Our Alec Magnet reports at page one that, at Columbia University, where President Bollinger ostentatiously opposed bringing the Reserve Officers Training Corps back to campus, ROTC advocates are hoping that the decision in Rumsfeld will help their cause. Perhaps it is time for Congress to expand the Solomon Amendment so that federal funding assures access to campus not only for recruiters at law schools but also for those who want to train military officers. ROTC’s opponents argue that the cases are different; ROTC involves letting the military actually run classes on campus, while the Solomon Amendment merely gives military recruiters the same access afforded to recruiters from corporate law firms. The colleges want to maintain academic standards and control of their curricula.Well, if they want to do that, they are free to refuse federal funding, as does Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. And it’s hard to see what’s defensible about the current standards at places like Columbia – where a course on “The Metaphisics of Antiterrorism” is taught by the anthropology professor, Nicholas DeGenova, called after September 11 for “a million Mogadishus” and said “the only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military.”In that context, Columbia’s official statement yesterday about its “respect for the military, or for the men and women serving in it,” just rings hollow. The Columbia statement claims, “The University recognizes the vital role our military plays in the world, ensuring national security, protecting and advancing democratic ideals, and providing humanitarian relief where and when it is needed the most.”Well, if they recognize the role, why don’t they bring ROTC back to campus? Lawrence Summers was the first Harvard president in years to address a ROTC commissioning ceremony, and his reward was to be humiliated by his own faculty to the point where he resigned the presidency. Truth is, the protestations of the professors and the Bollinger-type administrators and, for that matter, the trustees of a lot of these universities just aren’t credible any more, a fact students at many of these universities increasingly realize and that the Supreme Court yesterday ruled on by a vote of eight to nothing .

Law Professors Humiliated

Law Professors Humiliated

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