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What's at stake in Rumsfeld v FAIR
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in Rumsfeld v. FAIR, and as campuses across the country erupt in protests, the precise figures at stake in the heated national dispute about the Solomon Amendment are well worth studying. Today, ACTA released that information for a number of top schools that wish to bar military recruiters while still receiving federal funds from the Department of Defense and other agencies covered by the Solomon Amendment. The numbers are instructive, revealing both the hefty price tag the government has placed on schools' wish to bar military recruiters as well as the substantial lack of principle at work in institutions' increasingly common claim that they ought to be able to bar recruiters--and thus protest the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy--while still depending on federal grant and contract money to finance their research programs.
Harvard, for example, had planned to bar military recruiters this year until the Pentagon warned the university that doing so would cost Harvard its funding from the departments of defense, education, labor, and health and human services; upon receipt of that warning, Harvard decided to allow military recruiters after all--and to keep the $386 million that would have been the price of a principled stand.
At Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and many other schools, similar logic is in place: Schools are allowing military recruiters on campus because they fear losing federal funding that is pegged to their compliance with the Solomon Amendment--but they are doing so grudgingly, and they are hoping that the Supreme Court will grant them the right to have things both ways. In an amicus brief filed last month by Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, NYU, and the University of Chicago, the signatory schools collaborated to argue that it is in fact their constititional right--not to mention their academic freedom--to have things both ways. Without any sense of contradiction, they also argued that they cannot afford to lose the research dollars they presently get from the government without losing their standing as top research universities. Thus does lofty moral principle merge with undisguised self-interest.
ACTA's research reveals that for Cornell, $200 million is at stake; for Columbia $457 million; for Chicago $346 million; and for Penn, $496 million. This is not all the federal funding each of these schools receives, but it's most of it--at most top research institutions, federal funding accounts for 70-80% of the research budget. "The case coming before the Supreme Court should alert trustees to the manner in which the political activism of administrators is both hypocritical and fundamentally at odds with the university's commitment to give students the right to think for themselves," said Anne D. Neal, ACTA's president.
ACTA's press release also notes the unethical aspects of universities' wish effectively to prevent students from making truly informed career choices by denying them access to military recruiters. "It simply defies understanding how institutions such as Yale can claim they are educating their students and then deny them basic information about possible careers and the defense of our country," said Neal.
The release concludes with a call to trustees to insist that their institutions stop placing an activist agenda ahead of their obligations to students. "Rather than hiding behind the faculty and administrators, trustees must act in the best interests of students and the public," Neal said. "They should commit their institutions to ensuring that students have appropriate access to recruiters. ... These elite institutions offer a perfect case study in Hypocrisy 101. Either they should reject federal money because of their convictions, or let recruiters on campus, now and forever."
The full release along with funding figures can be read here.
Posted by acta online on October 12, 2005 at October 12, 2005 02:15 PM
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Comments
See my comments on the Solomon Amendment case here. I address some common misconceptions about the case:
Posted by: Michael Herman at October 14, 2005 09:47 AM
Here is my post about this topic. Sorry for incorrectly typing it in before.
Posted by: Michael Herman at October 14, 2005 10:29 AM