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The recent Supreme Court hearings on the Solomon Amendment have thrown
the issue of military recruitment back into the limelight at Harvard.
With the Court likely to reject the arguments of the Forum for Academic
and Institutional Rights (FAIR), Harvard will again be forced to choose
between $400 million of federal money and the unpleasantness of having
discriminatory recruiters on campus.
When Dean of the Law School Elena Kagan faced exactly this
choice in September, student groups such as Lambda, the Law School’s
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered students association,
denounced what they saw as the bigoted policies of the Pentagon, but
accepted that too much funding was at stake for Harvard to refuse to
comply.
Lambda’s stance involved a perfectly reasonable cost-benefit
analysis, based on a recognition of Harvard’s immense contribution to
the public good. A $400 million funding-cut would have jeopardized much
of the University’s cutting-edge research in science and medicine, a
price that not even Lambda feels is worth paying.
But even without Congress’s somewhat bizarre and heavy-handed
creation of an artificial penalty for turning away recruiters, the
University’s ambivalence towards the military carries a number of more
subtle costs.
Harvard’s objection to recruiters on campus extends far beyond
distaste at the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy. Concern for the
rights of gay students is only the latest incarnation of a deep seated
antipathy towards the military, dating from the Vietnam War period. To
many at Harvard, the presence of the military on campus under any
circumstances is objectionable, regardless of the Pentagon’s policy
towards gays.
To a majority of Americans, especially in the post 9/11
atmosphere, this stance is an unpatriotic betrayal of Harvard’s civic
duty. As government lawyers argued before the Supreme Court, the
country has the right to expect that the military will have access to
the nation’s best and brightest young people. To many, even moderates
who dislike the DADT policy, it seems that gay rights are being
over-prioritized at the expense of the national interest.
It is this sentiment that makes the Solomon Amendment an
extremely effective political tool for social conservatives. By forcing
universities to publicly oppose military presence on their campuses,
the amendment robs the universities of their credibility on defense
issues in the eyes of the public.
The universities, effectively cornered in stereotypes of east
coast academic liberalism, are prevented from fully contributing to the
important debate over the DADT policy. Harvard might be respected, but
no one wants to listen to “the Kremlin on the Charles.” This
marginalizes rational and intelligent opposition to DADT, and acts only
in the interests of those who wish to preserve the status quo.
If gay rights are the only concern keeping the military
off-campus, it makes more tactical sense to allow the military to
recruit, with disclaimers dissociating the school from anti-gay
discrimination, as the justices suggested during oral arguments.
This fosters the impression that the University, whilst
respectfully disagreeing with aspects of the military’s policy, accepts
that the national interest overrides these concerns. By making it clear
that its objection is to a discriminatory policy rather than to the
military as a whole, the University’s objections are more likely to be
taken seriously as the legitimate objections of a rational, moderate,
and patriotic institution, rather than the irrelevant obstructionism of
radical leftists.
Of course, the price of such pragmatism is borne by a minority
of the student body. Although it is unfortunate to send the message
that the administration condones discrimination of this nature, the
practical impact on the everyday life of the campus is relatively
small. Law schools will retain, and undoubtedly exercise, the right to
append a disclaimer to any emails or posters advertising recruiting
events highlighting their disagreement with DADT. At the events
themselves, military recruiters remain confined to a small, easily
avoidable space.
Ultimately, the Congress’s policy on gays in the military is
unfortunate, but it is the reality that universities must face for the
foreseeable future. Harvard should be prepared to work with this
reality, in recognition of a broader national interest. Not only is
realism the right policy to adopt in principle, it also has the happy
side-effect of hastening the end of unreasonable discrimination against
gays in the military. If our objections to recruiters are genuinely
based on a concern for gay rights, we do those rights a greater service
by welcoming recruiters back to campus.
Cormac A. Early ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Thayer Hall.
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