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Carol Platt Liebau - Columnist
Carol
Platt Liebau is editorial director and a senior member
of theOneRepublic and CaliforniaRepublic editorial
board. She is an attorney, political analyst and commentator
based in San Marino, CA, and has appeared on the Fox
News Channel, MSNBC, CNN, Orange County News Channel,
Cox Cable and a variety of radio programs throughout
the United States. A graduate of Princeton University
and Harvard Law School, Carol Platt Liebau also served
as the first female managing editor of the Harvard Law
Review. Her web log can be found at CarolLiebau.blogspot.com [go
to Liebau index]
 The “Crimson” Letter
Harvard Law School’s Badge of Shame...
[Carol
Platt Liebau] 12/13/04
Harvard
Law School has always been in the vanguard. It is America’s
oldest law school; it pioneered the case method of teaching law,
and was the first to adopt a loan forgiveness program for those
who enter the public interest field. Once again last week, the
law school made news for being in the vanguard. But this time,
it is in a way that is unworthy of its venerable heritage.
After a ruling
from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania, Harvard
became the first school to reinstate a ban on military
recruitment on campus. Until this ruling, the law school had
been required to allow on-campus recruiting because of the Solomon
Amendment, a law that made Harvard’s federal funding dependent
on its allowing access to the military. The Amendment was passed
in 1994 because Harvard, like many other “elite” universities,
had determined that the military’s “don’t ask
/ don’t tell” policy on homosexuals in the military
(signed into law by Democrat Bill Clinton) constituted a violation
of the school’s non-discrimination policy.
The Third
Circuit (which doesn’t cover Massachusetts,
by the way) held that the Amendment infringed on the law schools’ free
speech rights by, in effect, forcing them to articulate an opinion
(the military’s) contrary to their own. Of course, the
argument is specious. Allowing military recruitment on campus
doesn’t constitute an endorsement by Harvard of the military
or its views, any more than allowing Mark Geragos to recruit
on campus means that Harvard believes that Scott Peterson or
Michael Jackson is innocent. In fact, the Solomon Amendment doesn’t
force Harvard to speak at all – it only mandates that Harvard
must itself tolerate military speech on its oh-so-tolerant, oh-so-diverse
campus.
Nor, contrary
to what the Third Circuit held, is this a case where withholding
federal
funds would constitute an “unconstitutional
condition.” After all, the Solomon Amendment didn’t
force any university to admit or to agree with military recruiters;
it simply declined to shower taxpayer money on those that decided
to exclude them. Now, however, Harvard gets to have it both ways – it
can treat the guarantors of America’s freedom as second
class citizens, even as it continues to feast at the government
trough.
Harvard’s reaction to the Third Circuit holding sums up
better than anything, perhaps, the state of liberalism in America
today. No one can deny that Harvard has the right to expel the
military from its campus – but then it should be willing
to accept the consequences, namely, the denial of federal funds.
Rather than being honorable and consistent, however, Harvard
was never willing to “pay for its principles” by
declining the federal money when it was conditioned on military
access. Apparently, Harvard will only demonstrate its moral commitment
to gay rights when it won’t cost anything to do so. It’s
moral vanity on the cheap.
It’s also short-sighted. As our soldiers battle Islamofascism
across the world, exactly whom are they protecting? All of us,
of course – but no one more than the preening professoriate,
many of whose members articulate far-out views that would result
in prompt imprisonment or death in a world governed by our enemies.
And liberals
like the ones who dominate the Harvard Law School faculty have
embraced
the canard that America’s military
burden is disproportionately borne by minorities and the economically
disadvantaged. How, then, can they justify denying the military
access to those they proclaim to be “the best and the brightest” – the
supposedly intellectual elite? How, exactly, is the military
supposed to address the alleged inequality if they can’t
even get a hearing on America’s most selective university
campuses?
There can
be only one conclusion: Support for the liberal cause du jour –gay rights – has trumped both concern for
the defense of America and commitment to the liberal critique
of the military’s alleged racial and socioeconomic imbalance.
With the United States waging a global struggle against an Islamic
terrorism notoriously intolerant of homosexuals, it would seem
that Harvard’s perception of the hierarchy of threats here
is, to put it charitably, skewed.
As a Harvard Law School graduate and a proud American, I am
ashamed. John Harvard would be, too. tOR
Columnist
Carol Platt Liebau is a political analyst, commentator and CaliforniaRepublic.org editorial
director based in San Marino, CA. Ms. Liebau also served
as the first female managing editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Her web log can be found at CarolLiebau.blogspot.com
copyright
2004
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