The Anti-military Bias On Campus
November 23, 2005
By Jerry Coffee

Historically, college campuses have been the lightening rod for anti-military sentiment and violence. This has ranged from peaceful candlelight vigils to the occupation of administrative buildings, from the torching of ROTC facilities to the tragic deaths of students at Kent State during the Vietnam war. Even now there is strife on America’s campuses between academia and the military.

Now pending on the Supreme Court’s docket is the issue of campus recruiting by the military. Some “elite” East Coast universities showed their anti-military bias by banning military recruiters from their campuses alongside corporate recruiters. The Feds said fine, no recruiting, no federal funding. Since most campuses have reasonable nondiscrimination (equal opportunity) requirements for corporations recruiting on them, the American Taliban (aka the ACLU) jumped in and has tried to justify the ban on military recruiters based upon “the military’s discrimination against homosexuals” – a reference to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which basically means that homosexuals are welcome to serve in the military so long as they keep their sexual lives private. Many join and do.

Our own University of Hawaii is certainly no exception to this phenomenon.

I recently spent a couple of days on the Manoa campus attending sessions of the four-day symposium on “Literature and Film of the Vietnam War,” a potentially useful and enriching experience sponsored and very effectively organized by the English Department. Presenters included Denby Fawcett of KITV and Tad Bartimus of Hana, both of whom gave excellent teaching examples of how even much of their current writing is informed by their experiences as news correspondents in Vietnam. Unfortunately, they were more the exception than the rule as presenter after presenter drifted into angry and faithless anti-war/anti-military politicization of their presentations, if not by diatribe, then by constant innuendo.

The obvious “darling” of the symposium was Tim O’Brien, the prolific author of several Vietnam-based novels. He is talented and had much to teach in his keynote address, “Thirty Years After.” But, sadly, he frequently couldn’t resist politicizing his material with irrelevant anti-Iraq and anti-Bush rhetoric. And even when he did resist, fawning students or faculty in the audience would draw it out of him with their leading questions to which they already knew his answers.

Gen. Eric Shinseki, U.S. Army (Ret.) spoke one evening to an overflow crowd at the Campus Center. He spoke of his upbringing on Kauai and his Army career which culminated as the Chief of Staff of the Army. Apparently, his speech was not partisan enough for the audience comprised mostly of students and faculty, who had obviously expected him to air his well-publicized differences with the Bush administration on appropriate troop levels in Iraq. After his formal remarks, a long line formed for Q&A. Most of the questions were preceded by mini “speeches of opportunity” with anti-military undertones. But try as they may, the general refused to be sucked in – a form of diplomacy well-honed in a long, successful military career.

The current point of contention at Manoa is the pending establishment of the University Affiliated Research Center (UARC), a formal University-Navy research partnership with “win-win” written all over it. The partnership would facilitate joint projects with national security applications, most of which would have civilian applications as well. Nevertheless, the UARC was the catalyst for the illegal, weeklong student-faculty occupation of the president’s office last spring, and is still being portrayed as an evil monster octopus with tentacles probing and encircling every aspect of Manoa’s academic life.

Anti-UARC articles by Beverly Keever, professor of journalism at UH-Manoa, were passed out at the Shinseki event. After misrepresenting later emerging details of the UH-Navy contract as a diabolical coverup, she concludes, “These surprises … are likely to stoke rising tensions on UH’s flagship campus” – a prophecy she no doubt intends to help come true.

Granted, college is the time for idealism and hope, the time we enjoy before having to actually deal with the real world. But that doesn’t excuse university faculty – who are supposed to already be in the real world, and wiser than their students – from making and teaching the connection between academic freedom and the source of that freedom – our Constitution – which our military is sworn to “protect and defend.”

Find this article at: http://www.midweek.com/content/columns/coffeebreak_article/the_anti_military_bias_on_campus/

Amicus Harvard Law School Professors In Support of FAIR, in Rumsfeld v. FAIR

source: http://www.acslaw.org/node/8623

By Harold Eugene Oliver III, George Washington University Law School

Amici of various Harvard Law School Professors put forth the following arguments in support of FAIR: (1) The Solomon Amendment bars only anti-military policies; it does not give military recruiters a special right to disregard neutral and generally applicable recruiting rules; and (2) Sound principles of judicial restraint counsel that this Court should resolve the question of statutory coverage before turning, only if necessary, to constitutionality.
A collection of faculty members from the Harvard Law School have written this amicus brief on behalf of Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc. (FAIR) in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc.#160; Before the Solomon Amendment, Harvard?like many other law schools?had not allowed the military to utilize its Office of Career Services (OCS) due to the discriminatory employment practices of the military.#160; However, Harvard did not deny the military access to its facilities; the military could use Harvard’s facilities for recruiting if they had been invited by students or student groups.#160; After the government threatened to pull funding in 2002?stating this practice did not meet the requirements of the Solomon Amendment?Harvard was forced to change their policies and allow the military to use its OCS.#160; The authors of this brief are writing because they are troubled by the military and government’s actions, believing them to be inconsistent with the principles of academic freedom and the actual language of the Solomon Amendment.
The faculty’s first major argument is that the Solomon Amendment only applies to schools with an “anti-military” policy that prevents the military from recruiting on campus.#160; They argue that the law school’s policy does not fall into that classification since it does not specifically target the military and, therefore, they did not violate the Solomon Amendment.#160; Instead of focusing on preventing military recruitment, they argue that Harvard’s anti-discrimination policy is in the same vein as other law school policies such as those that prohibit when employers can contact students or regulations about their hiring process?all of which are legal.#160; They argue that if the military did not want to follow the anti-discrimination policy than they should do what any employer does when they do not want to follow one of Harvard’s policies?they can choose not to recruit there.#160; The Solomon Amendment did not intend, according to the authors, to grant the military special privileges in recruiting that even other federal agencies do not have; instead it only intended to prevent clear anti-military or anti-ROTC policies from being promulgated.#160; Additionally, the authors suggest that the Department of Defense’s (DoD) regulations favor their interpretation of the Solomon Amendment; the DoD’s regulations state that the Solomon Amendment’s funding restrictions do not apply to schools that are applying the restriction keeping the military off-campus to all employers.#160; This is the case with the law school’s anti-discrimination policy; it is being applied to all employers recruiting on their campus.#160; As such, this policy is a neutral policy?as opposed to an anti-military one?and its enforcement does not violate the Solomon Amendment.
Their second major argument is the Solomon Amendment only mandates “access” to law schools for recruitment purposes; it does not demand equal access to these schools and any suggestion that it does ignores both the text of the Amendment and its history.#160; To the authors, the text of the Solomon Amendment may not “prohibit or prevent” military recruiters from having access to campus resources.#160; The text says nothing about a law school having to give the military every possible resource available.#160; The legislative history also suggests this; as Solomon himself argued that this Amendment would only apply to schools that had “barred” the military from recruiting on their grounds.#160; They also suggest that there is a massive disparity in DoD regulations on this issue and their litigating position.#160; DoD regulations state that schools only have to prove that access is “equal in quality and scope” when the school is not providing access; a far cry from the permanent requirement for equality that the DoD is arguing for in its litigation.#160; As a result of this, the law schools in question could not have violated a regulation that does not exist and the Solomon Amendment should not be applied in this case.
Since the Solomon Amendment only applies to anti-military policies?not neutral and universally applied guidelines?and that it only demands access, not equality, the Harvard Law School faculty argues that the Supreme Court should rule in favor of FAIR and prevent the federal government from pulling funding as a result to the schools’ enforcement of anti-discrimination policies.

By James Kirchick
Published Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Source:

http://www.yaledailynews.com/opinion/staff-columns/2003/10/15/anti-jag-policy-quashes-law-students-free-speech-r/

On Monday, the Yale Daily News reported that nearly half of the Yale Law School’s professors plan to sue the Department of Defense over its campus recruiting policies. In their haste, they ought to heed the words of of the free speech champion, and former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. In the 1927 case Whitney v. California, Brandeis expressed in his concurring opinion what has emerged as an essential condition in First Amendment legal thinking: in heated disputes, “– the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” Unfortunately, certain members of the faculty are pursuing an illiberal agenda by attempting to prevent Judge Advocate General Corps recruiters from meeting with students on campus.

The military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” policy has inflamed a national controversy in which an anonymous group of law schools sued the Defense Department over the Solomon Amendment. They plan to argue that the 1995 federal statute, which requires universities receiving federal funds to allow military recruiters on campus, violates the free-speech principles of the Constitution. Liberals have embraced the issue of gays in the military as one of civil rights. With a pervasive distaste for the armed forces, it is easy for the Left to attack the military’s policy on gays.

But what if the military’s decision to prohibit open gays from serving, aside from its unseemly un-American quality, is detrimental to our national security? Last November, the military discharged seven Arab-speaking linguists because of their homosexuality. At a time when we are fighting an Arabic-speaking enemy and when the need for trained Arabic speakers is dire, the stupidity of this policy could not be clearer. It is not the military’s concern who its translators sleep with, just that they speak their respective languages proficiently. Frank Kameny, one of the first gay rights advocates and a veteran of World War II, offered a tongue-in-cheek yet logically argued response. “To lower the quality of our armed services is to give aid and comfort to our enemies. But under Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution. giving aid and comfort to the enemy is a definition of Treason — anyone — who supports, administers, or is involved in the exclusion of gays from our armed services — is a traitor who should be indicted, prosecuted, tried, convicted, and hanged for Treason.”

Conservatives trumpet their toughness on national security but most of them (with notable exceptions like the late Barry Goldwater) oppose allowing gays to serve openly, placing their anathema to gay people over the national interest. But militaries throughout the Western world allow gays to serve openly. Britain, Canada, France and Israel, a country which by necessity has one of the most effective fighting forces on earth, allow open homosexuals to serve. What makes gays in the military such a political hot potato here is the influence of the religious right, a phenomenon unique to America and a major factor contributing to the military’s anti-gay policy.

But here at Yale, liberals are guilty of a similar ideological sin to their conservative opponents, for they, too, place dogma over the national interest. And by impeding students from seeking information on joining the JAG Corps, not only do they prevent our nation’s military from attracting the best and brightest minds, they are also undermining the principles of the First Amendment.

It is surprising that so many professors from a school as prestigious as Yale Law would sign onto a lawsuit that rests on such problematic legal ground. No one has forbidden law students, faculty or the administration from speaking out against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Thus it is difficult to understand how anyone’s free-speech rights are being violated. Opponents of the Solomon Amendment can stand at the law school with camouflage gags symbolically placed in their mouths and hang black sheets in its hallways, but actively preventing students from seeking information about joining the armed forces is a different action entirely. If anything, it is Yale Law School that violates the free association and speech rights of the JAG representatives and the students who wish to meet with them. Law students should have the same opportunity to receive information about the JAG Corps as they do to receive information about joining some big corporate law firm. It is not the University’s role to tell its students who they can and cannot meet with on campus. To do so prevents the free flow of information and contradicts the mission of a discursive intellectual community. Yale University has a binding agreement when it accepts federal money. If Yale breaches the contract by refusing military recruiters the right to interview students on campus, then the University should not expect the government to fund this obstruction. Unless the professors can prove that the Solomon Amendment is forcing them to violate the Constitution, which they cannot, they will have no case.

In addition to the general anti-military sentiment that is so prevalent on this campus, now one may be labeled a “homophobe” if he merely wants to discuss job opportunities with a military recruiter in a law school classroom. Case in point: only one student signed up to meet with the JAG recruiter last week and that appointment was eventually cancelled.

From a tactical perspective, preventing military recruiters from meeting with students will not change the military’s anti-gay policy and those advocates who so self-righteously believe that they are having an impact on this issue greatly exaggerate their own importance. If gay advocates ever wish to change the military’s unconscionable policy, they would be well-advised to encourage, and not hamper, military recruitment at a socially progressive campus such as Yale. Gay writer Paul Varnell wrote earlier this year in the Chicago Free Press that banning Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs on campus, which Professor Donald Kagan said was “a stain on our record,” has forestalled the revocation of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” by discouraging those very heterosexuals who oppose the policy from joining the armed forces. “In short,” he writes, “the effect of banishing ROTC and military recruiting by the most liberal, gay-accepting colleges and universities was to increase the proportion of recruits and young officers who are less accepting of gays, whose college experience was unlikely to counter negative views of gays, and who do not want gays in the military.” While claiming to be leading the fight for gay equality by snubbing their noses at the military, sympathizers of the gay cause are actually harming the movement’s prospects.

It pains me to no end that a country that preaches equality has not fully accepted many of its own citizens into the fold. It is maddening that one of the greatest national institutions is not open to me simply because of who I am. But it would be selfish and self-aggrandizing to let my personal disagreement with the military’s unfair policies get in the way of my peers who wish to seek information about serving their country. If the University itself were to join this lawsuit, an institution that touts its duty to produce public leaders would be thwarting that very ideal.

James Kirchick is a sophomore in Pierson College.

College Professor: “Real Freedom will come when American Soldiers Murder Superiors

Vows to kick young conservatives off campus

HERNDON, VA – Warren Community College English professor, John Daly, said that “Real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors.” Rebecca Beach, a freshman at Warren Community College in Washington, New Jersey, received this unexpected reply to a recent email she sent the faculty at her school announcing the appearance of decorated Iraq war hero, Lt. Col. Scott Rutter, on Thursday, November 17 to discuss America’s accomplishments in Iraq.

In the email, Daly told Rebecca that he will ask students in his English and writing classes to boycott the event and also vowed “to expose [her] right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like [Rebecca’s] won’t dare show their face on a college campus.” Daly’s mean spirited and hateful comments were directed at Rebecca for organizing Lt. Col. Scott Rutter and for hanging up fliers contrasting the number of people killed under communism to those liberated under Ronald Reagan.

Since Professor John Daly has created a hostile learning environment for Rebecca, she is demanding that Warren Community College President William Austin institute seminars on free speech and sensitivity to teach intolerant leftists, such as Daly, to be respectful of differing opinion

Daly’s insane email to Rebecca also claimed that “CAPTIALISM has killed many more” people than communism [emphasis his] and that the “poor and working class people” are recruited to “fight and die for EXXON and other corporations.”

“John Daly was hired to teach English, not to verbally attack students and lead leftist protests,” said Jason Mattera, spokesman for Young America’s Foundation.

The full unedited text of Professor Daly’s email follows.

November 13, 2005

Dear Rebecca:

I am asking my students to boycott your event. I am also going to ask others to boycott it. Your literature and signs in the entrance lobby look like fascist propaganda and is extremely offensive. Your main poster “Communism killed 100,000,000″ is not only untrue, but ignores the fact that CAPITALISM has killed many more and the evidence for that can be seen in the daily news papers. The U.S. government can fly to dominate the people of Iraq in 12 hours, yet it took them five days to assist the people devastated by huricane Katrina. Racism and profits were key to their priorities. Exxon, by the way, made $9 Billion in profits this last quarter–their highest proft margin ever. Thanks to the students of WCCC and other poor and working class people who are recruited to fight and die for EXXON and other corporations who earning megaprofits from their imperialist plunders. If you want to count the number of deaths based on political systems, you can begin with the more than a million children who have died in Iraq from U.S.-imposed sanctions and war. Or the million African American people who died from lack of access to healthcare in the US over the last 10 years.

I will continue to expose your right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like your won’t dare show their face on a college campus. Real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors and fight for just causes and for people’s needs–such freedom fighters can be counted throughout American history and they certainly will be counted again.

Prof. John Daly