See You in Court
The Supreme Court
has decided to hear a case challenging the legitimacy of the Solomon Amendment, an issue about which I wrote extensively in
Harvard Rules.
Some background: The Solomon Amendment is the nasty handiwork of the late Gerald Solomon, a bilious congressman from upstate New York. It bans any university from receiving federal funding if that university prohibits military recruiting on campus, as many now do because of the military's discrimination against gays. The Clinton Administration didn't enforce the law. The Bush folks need the soldiers—and especially the military lawyers—and perhaps see it as a way to strike back against the liberal elite.
Enforcement of the Solomon Amendment has been a prickly situation at Harvard, which stood to lose more than $400 million in federal dollars annually. While students and professors recognized the import of that, they also wanted to challenge the amendment in court. On this, they received no support whatsoever from Larry Summers, who said essentially that the issue of anti-gay discrimination was not important enough to tangle with the Republicans.
Now, thanks to a group called the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR), the issue heads to the Supreme Court.
For Harvard, this feels like a lost opportunity to promote social justice, and another reminder of how utterly dependent the university has become on the largesse of the federal government.
